


when the wild grasses weave

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [36]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Forced Abortion, Forced Prostitution, M/M, Multi, Rape/Non-con Elements, Spirit World, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many worlds, but they share the same sky. When the sun sets on the human world, a chain of events are set into motion, connecting strangers to one another. A human boy who’s lost his way. A dragon who’s lost his spark. Spirits of the water, earth, and sky who may never find one another again. And two abominations of light and darkness who might not even be a memory in the end. When the wild grasses weave, who will find what they’re looking for? A Spirited Away AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the wild grasses weave

**Author's Note:**

> For Jen, who helped me through this even though she’s been working on her own big bang. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you and I cannot thank you enough. And to Shelby, who was a real pleasure to work with and is immensely talented. Seriously, her rough draft nearly made me swoon and the final art is [the most beautiful thing in the history of ever.](http://foxslit.deviantart.com/art/Reprise-406607752) Seriously, it is absolutely gorgeous. <33 A soundtrack for the fic can be found [here.](http://8tracks.com/callunavulgari/when-the-wild-grasses-weave/) Mind the fact that the soundtrack is meant to accompany the reading, so there are some minor to major spoilers toward the end of the mix. And last but not least, I am counting this as my Dark Month 2013, Day 11, because posting more than 50k in a day gives me hives.

_Thinking of you, wherever you are…_  
  
Once upon a time, a little girl wrote a poem. She was young, her head full of dreams, and her best friends were leaving her for another district.  
  
 _We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish._  
  
The story doesn’t start there—it starts long before it, with a lonely old spirit possessed by a thirst for greed. It starts with an old man with a dream, a bathhouse that still smells of fresh paint and the first spirits who wander through its halls. It starts with a girl and her family, a new job, and the man she fell for. It starts with a spirit of the earth and the crackle of the boiler flames—with the boy who lived a long human life and was reborn from the air.  
  
It starts with yet another boy, rising from the ashes of an old life and into something new.  
  
A house fire and the crying child inside, a new beginning.  
  
But the poem is important, as is the little girl, though she won’t know it yet. Her pencil scritching on paper as the music swells up inside her.  
  
 _And who knows: Starting a new journey may not be so hard, or maybe it has already begun_ , she writes, humming quietly to herself as her classmates bustle around her.  
  
Stories don’t just start with one event, they start as a chain—threads connecting strangers to one another, first one, and then another and another; memories, hopes, dreams, love, the stepping stones of the universe.  
  
The little girl writes her poem, her heart penned out in grey graphite, and she gives it away as a gift.  
  
 _There are many worlds, but they share the same sky - one sky, one destiny_.  
  
She makes a pleased sound in the back of her throat, eyelashes fluttering as she rereads it one last time and tucks the sheet of paper into her jacket pocket. She’ll give it to them at recess, she thinks, and the first thread thrums inside her heart, twanging against a second and a third.  
  
It resonates, a frequency that only fate recognizes, and the chain of events connect together.  
  
After all, a story has to start somewhere, right?  
  
.  
  
There’s a boy on the bridge.  
  
Axel’s early, the sun just starting to sink below the horizon. The shops all smell of fresh meat, offerings for the night’s guests, but the lanterns have yet to be lit. The shadows are stretching under his feet, the little alleyways between the shops clogged with them, like spiderwebs waiting to snare unsuspecting prey.  
  
Axel is early, bone-tired and starving, but victorious, and there is a human boy on the bridge between the spirit world and the human—too far beyond a river that’s already begun to bloat.  
  
The sinking sun is glinting off of his tousled yellow hair, making it shine—warming the boy’s blue eyes until it’s almost as if they’ve been set aglow.  
  
For precious few moments, Axel is perilously close to setting the boy aflame and saving the Superior the trouble of yet another swine for his pen. Better a roasted piglet for the spirits to feast upon than yet another to fester alongside the others until they’re good and fat—a snack, to conserve space and feed.  
  
The seconds tick by and Axel does not move, watching carefully as the boy stares at him with wide eyes. Idly, he wonders which part of the boy would taste the best—if perhaps he has the time to steal a nibble before he’s meant to report to his master.  
  
The sunlight slides over the both of them, the light changing as it dips further and further beyond the horizon. The breeze changes direction, sending Axel’s hair skittering across his bare neck as it blows towards him—  
  
He freezes, an odd scent tickling his nose—something that isn’t the spirit world in the hours in between, something not exclusively human—not like the stench of all the other swine that have come before this boy. The smell is familiar, making him think of burnt wood and summer skies, but it isn’t until the sun angles just right that he recognizes this boy; a remnant of a life long gone.  
  
Axel stares and reaches into the cobwebbed memories of _before_ —and ah, yes.  
  
Roxas.  
  
The memory that comes on the cusp of that realization is bloated with forgotten sensations: the crackle of burning wood and the smell of singed flesh. Crying, from deep within the house he was consuming from the inside out. A babe, surely, he remembers thinking, judging by the pitch of its squalls.  
  
Curious, he’d allowed himself to carry on—devouring everything in his path; children’s etchings, the boots and cloaks in the inside closet, the pans and food in the kitchen. His flames ate up the sides of the cupboards and down the hall; couches and televisions and the drunken human in the living room—the lit cigarette catching onto the whiskey-stained carpet that had beckoned to Axel in the first place already ash.  
  
It was a child, not quite a babe but hardly fully grown. Perhaps, three or four.  
  
He’d started forward, eager to taste flesh and bones, but something had stopped him—some unusual feeling deep within the heart of his inferno.  
  
Manifesting flesh and scales—a serpentine form that would suit his purpose just fine—he had gazed at the crying child, his sooty hair and fear-bright eyes, and wondered how this ordinary child intrigued him when hundreds of others had not.  
  
Grinning had only made the child cry harder, but he cared not. The child’s tears would turn to vapor in the heat before they could reach the ground.  
  
He guided the child from the flames even as the boy’s parents turned to ash in his belly.  
  
Once the boy was safe in the arms of the do-gooders on the front step, he’d gone on his way, onto the next inferno, clutching the ember that was the boy’s name close to himself—Roxas.  
  
It is that very same boy, knuckles white against the flaking red paint of the spirit bridge. Older, perhaps—but the very same boy, now caught in the twilight dusk of the spirits.  
  
Axel wonders if he will be able to save him this time as well.  
  
The spirits clatter all around him, coming to life as the human world fades, noisy in their urgency to be swallowed up by a place of rest. There is fear in the boy’s eyes now, wariness that drowns the blue as Axel continues to do nothing but gaze at him—fear and a desperate desire to flee.  
  
Axel closes his eyes. Well then, he thinks. He shall coax that small flame of fear into a roaring inferno, chase the boy to the far side of the river where he will be safe from Ansem and his thieving ways. That curious heart of his will be safe and whole.  
  
Axel’s human form is wavering around the edges, like the rippling heat of a mirage, smoke drifting from where his skin meets cloth. He takes a breath of the cool air, and lets the fire lick up his side—lets it set his form aflame.  
  
The boy flinches, finally staggering away from the railing he’d been clinging to. Axel takes the moment to fling a spell over his shoulder at the spirits starting to drift their way, the curious ones who have surely noticed the human’s stench.  
  
“They’re lighting the lamps,” he hisses, when the boy does not move. “Go! Get across the river and you’ll be safe!”  
  
The child—Roxas—hesitates still, so Axel turns to fully face him, letting a flicker of scales creep across his brow. “Go, now!” he snarls and the boy gasps, stumbling quickly away.  
  
Axel sighs, his belly empty—shuddering with the desire to consume something, to let his magic wrap something up in flames and devour it. Instead, he lets his hunger simmer as he turns toward the confused spirits, plastering a polite smile to his face as he readies himself to greet their guests.  
  
Already he can see the glimmer of a golden ferry in the distance.  
  
With luck, the child will not be too late.  
  
Unfortunately, Axel has never been the luckiest of spirits.  
  
.  
  
There are a pair of pigs where he’d left his brother and Riku—a pair of fat, pink pigs wearing their clothes.  
  
The street fills with shadows and glowing yellow eyes.  
  
Roxas runs.  
  
(He doesn’t run fast enough.)  
  
.  
  
He finds Roxas crouched near the river, just on the edge of the slums, the boy’s form already flickering. Axel blinks down at him, his gut churning, something that feels like guilt clawing its way through his belly.  
  
The kid is quiet, not quite crying, just staring at his hands with blank eyes, so still that Axel thinks he might already be too late.  
  
When he crouches beside him, setting a hand on his shoulder, Roxas flinches.  
  
Axel sighs.  
  
“Thought I told you to get across the river?” he whispers, shaking his head as he pulls the berries from his pocket, rolling them between his thumb and forefinger. “Kids these days sure don’t listen the way they used to.”  
  
The kid turns his blank gaze on Axel, his fragile human muscles trembling beneath Axel’s hand.  
  
“Don’t be afraid,” Axel chides, rolling his eyes. “If I wanted to hurt you I would have let the spirits eat you alive on the bridge.”  
  
That doesn’t seem to relax the kid any. “C’mon, eat this,” he whispers, trying to press a berry to Roxas’ mouth.  
  
At that, the human finally reacts—flinching away from Axel violently. He throws a hand out, trying to push Axel away. “No, no, no, please, no,” he chants, eyes wild.  
  
“Look, I just told you I wasn’t gonna hurt you,” Axel says. “You gotta eat some food from this world or you’re gonna be gone for good, no more punkass human kid. You’ll be the whisper on the wind, just, shit. Just eat it, will you?”  
  
“No!” the kid shrieks, pulling back for a punch and—  
  
“Yeah, see what I mean? You’re disappearing faster than you think. Now eat this and get that hand out of my face, it feels weird.”  
  
It feels like nothing, really. The kid—Roxas, Roxas, Roxas—is too far gone for it to feel like anything at all. But it does the trick, Roxas pulling his hand back with wide eyes. He’s panicking, probably. Axel doesn’t remember ever being human, but he’s pretty sure their bodies don’t tend to go straight through things.  
  
“Don’t worry your pretty little head, it’s not gonna turn you into a pig,” he says, trying once more to push the berry into Roxas’ mouth. This time, Roxas lets him, only flinching a little when Axel’s fingers brush against his mouth.  
  
Roxas shudders at the taste, but relaxes after he chews on it for a while and doesn’t turn into a pig.  
  
“There ya go,” Axel grins. “All better.”  
  
The berries are already working, the kid going solid once more. Axel offers a hand, pleased when Roxas tentatively touches it.  
  
They sit in silence for another moment, before Roxas gives a little shudder and the tension goes out of his frame. “My brother and his friend...” the kid whispers. “They really turned into pigs, didn’t they?”  
  
Axel winces. “Uh... yeah, that’s kind of a thing that happens. Ansem isn’t too fond of trespassing humans and he’s got a twisted sense of humor. You’re lucky he didn’t just up and steal your heart.” He plasters a mocking smile onto his face, nudging the kid with his elbow. “Hey, so why didn’t you eat the food?”  
  
Roxas shrugs, kicking at a pebble by his foot. It goes skittering off into the river, giving a little plunk as it sinks into the water. “Didn’t feel right. This whole place doesn’t feel right, but fuck if anyone listens to me. Sora almost crashed the car and my brother loves adventures. He wanted to check the place out and shit. When they saw the food.. well, none of us had eaten all day and Riku insisted on paying.”  
  
He looks like he’s gonna cry, sitting there, and Axel is seized by the unfamiliar urge to comfort him somehow. “Chin up, small fry,” he says, ruffling the kid’s hair. “We’ll get the three of you outta here eventually.”  
  
Roxas blinks at him. “Eventually?”  
  
Axel bites his lip, reaching back to ruffle the ends of his unruly hair. It’s a nervous habit he doesn’t really remember picking up, so who knows how long he’s had it. “Well, it ain’t gonna be easy, that’s for sure. You won’t be able to get out now without Ansem and therein lies the issue. That crazy bastard is mean as can be, and he sure as hell ain’t just gonna let you out all willy nilly.”  
  
He sighs. They’re probably already looking for the third human.  
  
Axel glances up at the sky, wondering if he can spot the sentries already. The night sky is mostly clear, light pollution from the bathhouse and a few stars here and there, but—  
  
He freezes when he spots it, cursing quietly. “Don’t move,” he whispers, pushing the kid back into the brick wall behind him. He’s close enough that he can feel Roxas’ breath against his throat, hear his heartbeat start to pound doubletime. The smell of fear is back, thick and cloying in his nostrils, making his mouth water.  
  
Ansem’s unleashed _the Guardian_ to look for this kid—the spectre barely visible against the black of the sky. But Axel’s seen the horrible thing before, he can recognize the glowing yellow eyes and the pale wraps binding the creature’s mouth and upper torso. He shivers when it passes over them and casts a quick spell to make it look them over.  
  
“Fuck,” he mumbles, chewing on his lower lip. How the hell is he gonna make this work?  
  
“What is it?” the kid whispers, craning his neck so he can see past Axel.  
  
“A guardian,” he tells him. “And trust me, you don’t wanna fuck with it. It’ll chew you up and spit you out faster than you can call for help.”  
  
“You can’t beat it?” Roxas asks. “With... spells, or something?" His hesitation makes Axel cock an eyebrow at him, puzzled. Humans don't usually believe in magic, do they?  
  
"Its just... I saw you before. When you told me to run. You did something, didn't you? To stop those things." He shivers all over, trembling against Axel like a baby bird.  
  
Axel nods. The kid’s breath puffs against his cheek, distractingly human. He shifts a little so he isn't quite so close to the boy. "You would have died if I hadn't, little boy. Most of the spirits you'll find here don't take too well to your kind hanging around and polluting their place of rest."  
  
Roxas blinks at him. "What about you?" he asks. "You... you're not human, are you? Why don't you want to eat me?"  
  
 _I do want to eat you_ , he doesn't say, his stomach gurgling. Instead he clears his throat, shrugs, and drawls, "I'm on a diet."  
  
It's a shitty excuse and is in no way true, but it seems to placate the boy at any rate, though it really shouldn't. Slowly, the Guardian circles, the minutes passing in silence. Eventually, it fades from sight and Axel lets out a huff of relief, pulling away from Roxas’ warmth. "So," the boy whispers. "What happens now? If you aren't planning on eating me, what are you planning to do with me?"  
  
Axel has absolutely no idea. "I have no idea," he says honestly, because he really hasn't thought that far ahead. "I guess I could send you down to the boiler man, see if you can get a job down there with him."  
  
At Roxas' blank look, he sighs. "Terra. He works beneath the bathhouse. The guy’s been there for ages, probably since this place was created. No one really knows the story behind him, but rumor has it that Ansem has something on him and that's why he hasn't up and blown this joint. Hell, guy’s still got his name and it ain't very often that earth spirits let themselves get chained up all pretty like to the foundation of places like this."  
  
He shakes his head—the kid still looks blank as hell, he probably has no clue what Axel's talking about. "Anyway, he's a nice guy and he don't hate humans. Better him than Ansem."  
  
“If you say so,” Roxas shrugs. They watch the spirits disembark together, the river gently lapping at the sides of the ferry. Axel sucks in a breath through his nose, and realizes all at once that he hasn’t eaten in four days. Spirit or not, he still has to eat.  
  
“C’mon, we’d better get you out of here,” Axel says, trying for a smile as he gets to his feet. He tries to tug Roxas up with him, offering a hand, and starts when the human makes a distressed noise.  
  
“I can’t move my legs,” Roxas hisses. He’s glaring, but the panic is obvious. He’s freaking out. “What the hell did you do to me?”  
  
Axel isn’t the kind of spirit you send to calm kids down. Demyx would be better for that, or hell, maybe even Xigbar, he was always good with the little ones whenever he could wiggle his way out of security detail. Aqua too—she was soft-hearted and gentle, she would have been great at this. She could have made her voice go calm, assure the kid that nothing’s gonna happen to him. Axel just sighs and shakes his head.  
  
“I didn’t do _anything_ to you, Blondie. Ugh, just, here. Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”  
  
Roxas glares at him a moment longer, looking like he’s going to try for another punch, before the fight goes out of him. His shoulders slump as he bites his lip, his eyes finally sliding closed. Axel crouches again, gently tapping one knobby human knee with a claw.  
  
“In the name of the wind and fire within me, unbind him,” he whispers, eyes flashing when the magic leaks out of him, seeping into the human. It feels strange, his magic in someone else’s veins, but the feeling passes quickly as the magic sinks into the child’s muscles. He can feel it when it works, quickly tugging the boy to his feet and dragging him forward.  
  
Roxas is slow—too slow, and even taking him through the back alleyways, there’s still too much risk that they’ll be spotted. Any human is slow next to a dragon, and the idea of letting Ansem get his claws on this boy makes Axel sick with anger. He puts on another burst of speed, even though it makes Roxas curse, tripping a little as he struggles to keep Axel’s pace. Finally they reach a graffitied door that Axel gestures open. It leads to the storage huts, where they keep the sake and the grains, then further on to the freezers stocked with large fish. Past the freezers are the swine pens, which makes Roxas flinch behind him.  
  
He would try to reassure the boy, tell him that the pigs aren’t all humans—but he isn’t very fond of lying, least of all to this boy. So he keeps quiet, leading him through, their feet nearly silent on the hay.  
  
He casts a spell for invisibility before they get to the bridge—the bridge that’s already crawling with laughing spirits and oni of all shapes and sizes.  
  
“You have to hold your breath until we get across the bridge, okay?” he whispers, squeezing Roxas’ hand. “Even the smallest breath will break the spell, and then everyone will see you.”  
  
He waits until he gets a nod before moving, stepping past the hydrangeas and into the crowd. After a moment, he feels Roxas press up against his back. He’s shivering. “I’m not saying I’m scared,” he says, swallowing nervously. “But what exactly would happen if everyone could see me?”  
  
Axel sighs, patting the hand still wrapped tight in his. “You’ll be fine, just stay calm.”  
  
One of the frogs is shouting greetings to the guests, a lantern held aloft as Axel leads them through one of the side gates and out onto the main stretch of road. The crowd thickens from a trickle to a flood, swarming all around them. Roxas’ breathing is rapid, panicked against the back of his neck, stirring the little hairs there. It’s making his own heart pick up speed, the human’s fear contagious—he doesn’t even want to think about what Ansem would do to him if he found out that Axel was helping a human.  
  
He straightens up, letting his features settle into a familiar mask. “I’m back from my mission,” he says carelessly to the nearest frog.  
  
“Ah, welcome back, Master!” it calls, a smarmy smile stretching its frog lips wide as it lets them pass. They’re about to step onto the bridge and like it or not, he feels a spike of fear go down his spine. Holding spells in place over running water is difficult enough, but hoping that the boy can hold up his end as well? It’s not a position he’s comfortable being in.  
  
“Take a deep breath,” he whispers, listening for the boy’s inhalation. When it comes, he tightens his grip. “Now, hold it.”  
  
They step onto the bridge as one and Axel hisses a bit when he notices they’ve gotten themselves stuck behind a trio of slow moving baku, their trunks swaying as they meander forward.  Oddly, there’s a dark shape that they pass halfway over the bridge—a hooded figure with a hint of dark hair sticking out from beneath it. Roxas gives the unfamiliar creature a strange look, then turns to quirk an eyebrow at Axel.  
  
Axel quickens his pace, sidestepping the baku with a polite apology.  
  
There’s a group of oni holding things up on the other side of the bridge, and as Axel watches, one of them buries its face in one of the serving girl’s cleavage. The girl giggles, pushing into his touch, seemingly uncaring when one of the demon’s teeth draws a thin line of blood. Axel scoffs, holding tight to the thread of magic, willing it not to unspool. They’re in the home stretch now, and Roxas is whimpering beside him, but they’re only a few feet away—  
  
“Hang on, almost there,” he whispers when Roxas’ grasp on his hand tightens painfully.  
  
“Master Axel! Where ya been?” a frog shouts, leaping up to his level. Axel hears the gasp the exact moment that he feels his magic snap, rebounding like a band and slapping him in the face. He blinks, dazed, and through a film he hears the frog say, “Wha—a human?”  
  
Fuck.  
  
Immobilization spells are easy. Take a small amount of magic, wrap it around the target, and go. It will wear off soon, but it’s easy, and after the target will be confused enough that they may not even remember they saw you.  
  
The frog hangs in the air and Axel doesn’t shout, doesn’t call any attention, just yanks Roxas’ hand, wrapping wind around them as they go. It isn’t quite flight, but it’s quicker than running, and low enough to the ground he can get around the perverse oni still mingling with the girls. There’s a door behind them, one of the frog doors—a bit too small to use comfortably, but it gets them away from the crowd and into a private courtyard just outside the ground level of the bathhouse. Already he can hear servants shouting, running and shouting his name. He doesn’t know if the frog told them or if they’re just searching for him—maybe hoping he can help find the missing human himself.  
  
He crouches down amongst some bushes right against the walls of the bathhouse; the paper doors are see through, so they aren’t very protected. All someone has to do is open one and look down and they’ll be spotted, but it works for now. Long enough for him to calm his magic, long enough for Roxas to catch his breath.  
  
“Hurry, before it stinks up the place,” he hears one of the frogs shout, and he hisses, biting down savagely on his lip.  
  
“Damn, they know you’re here.”  
  
The boy is quiet for a moment, before he sighs. “I’m sorry,” Roxas whispers, smelling like guilt and fear.  
  
“No, it’s fine. You did good. If those fucking oni hadn’t been keen on motorboating those chicks right in the walkway we wouldn’t be in this mess.”  
  
He thinks Roxas might apologize again, but he’s not really paying attention, thinking so fast that his brain feels scrambled. If he can distract them, Roxas might have enough time to get to Terra before they find him, but that would mean letting him go off on his own.  
  
Axel glances over at the kid and finds him fidgeting, looking at the ground with a blush on his face. Whoops, definitely still holding his hand. He lets go, moving his hand so that it’s settled on the kid’s shoulder instead. Like that’s any better.  
  
Fuck, he’s gonna have to risk it. He carefully doesn’t think about what happened the last time he let the kid go off on his own and hunkers down next to him.  
  
“Okay, listen carefully. This is what we’re gonna do…”  
  
.  
  
Roxas is having a really, really bad day. It started okay. Roadtrips with his brother and his friends are always interesting, Sora blaring stupid music and Riku nodding along to the beat and K—  
  
Fuck, he lost his train of thought.  
  
The spot where that man—Axel, they’d called him—touched his forehead is still warm, a little tingly, the images that he’d put in Roxas’ head clinging to the forefront of his brain. Everything smells of hydrangeas and people are still shouting but—  
  
 _Just remember, Roxas. I’m your friend_ , he’d said. He was so warm, his body like a furnace next to Roxas’. But then, that made sense, what with how he’d purposefully lit himself on fire earlier when he was trying to scare Roxas into leaving.  
  
 _How’d you know my name is Roxas?_ he had asked, and Axel gave him a soft smile.  
  
 _I’ve known you since you were very small. Good luck, and for the love of all that’s holy, don’t make a sound_.  
  
He stays until it quiets down, chewing nervously on his lips as his brain whirs a mile a minute. He still feels sick. Sora and Riku—those pigs wearing their clothing, they’d terrified him, huge with long, curved tusks. He’d run away, left his brother behind just like that, too fucking scared of a bunch of shadow creatures.  
  
He takes a deep breath, moving from the shadows of the bushes. He’s quiet, he always has been. His mom used to say that he was her little mouse. Now that’s coming in handy as he unlatches the back gate.  
  
The stairs are just as steep as they’d looked in the image Axel gave him. Steeper even, no hand rails or anything to keep him from toppling off the side. The wind is fierce up here, gusting hard enough that he reflexively clenches his teeth. A train passes beneath him—which, weird. There are tracks down there, train tracks on the cracked ground below.  
  
Feeling stupid as hell, he scoots forward, down one step, and then two, slips—  
  
His heart is trying to break free of his ribs. He’s going to puke and then he’s going to die, which is really going to suck.  
  
A board breaks under his foot, and he flinches, teetering forward—  
  
He runs the rest of the way down, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to lose his balance the rest of the way and _fall_ all the way down. He doesn’t scream, but he wants to, his brain buzzing angrily and panicked and by the time he reaches safety he’s panting, so terrified that he can’t move. Holy fucking shit, he’s never doing something like that again. Fuck stairs.  
  
The rest of the way down isn’t too bad, but when he reaches the door to the boiler room he finds it rusty and unwilling to budge. He spends a good ten minutes cursing and tugging on it before it finally comes open with one final yank.  
  
Unsurprisingly, the boiler room is hot as hell. He’s sweating within seconds, wishing that he were wearing shorts like Sora had been instead of jeans and a stupid t-shirt. What really surprises him though, as he finally creeps around into the room proper, is the boiler man.  
  
He has an attractive face, somewhere between boy and man, a sharp jawline and glorious curving cheekbones framed by tousled, somewhat sweaty brown hair. His body is… generously muscled, the kind of body you see on statues and in paintings, but never expect to see on an actual person. He’s shirtless, pants slung low on his hips as he bends over whatever the hell he’s working on. He looks tired.  
  
But none of that is what surprises Roxas. The surprise stems from the eight arms that are busy turning levers, sorting herbs, and in the case of one, holding a cigarette. He shudders, everything in him screaming to back the fuck up, take his chances with the water, because seriously, fuck that shit.  
  
He makes himself take a step forward instead.  
  
There are little critters running around, big blocks of coal held over their heads. He watches as they toss the coal into the fire, cocking a brow when one seems to burn itself.  
  
“You’re scaring them off,” a voice says, unexpectedly soft. Roxas jumps anyway, turning to find the boiler man—Terra—watching him with an amused little smirk on his face.  
  
He blushes, bending at the waist for a quick little bow, his lips twisting with embarrassment. “Sorry,” he says, sidling closer to the man’s side and further away from the little balls of soot. This man is an earth spirit, Axel had said so. He wonders what all that entails and if it’s as cool as it sounds. “Axel told me to come ask you for work. Uh, may I have a job please?”  
  
 _Or Ansem will turn you into an animal if he doesn’t end up stealing your heart first_. Roxas gulps, shaking his head in an effort to dislodge the memory of Axel’s smooth voice.  
  
A bell rings somewhere above them and four little tokens attached to string appear before Terra. He sighs. “Four tokens at once, who do they think I am? Get to work you lazy sootballs!” he shouts, banging a hammer sharply against the wheel at his side.  
  
He takes a deep drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke trickle from his lips and nostrils like some kind of dragon.  
  
“Yeah, I’m Terra. Slave to the boiler that heats the bath,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow. “Unfortunately, I don’t need any help just now. This place is full of soot for me to animate, I’ve got more than enough workers. Now, if you don’t mind, some of us have work to do.”  
  
With that, he turns away, leaving Roxas to gape at him.  
  
“Please,” he whispers desperately, unsurprised when he’s ignored.  
  
He’s making his way back to the door, wondering what he’s going to tell Axel when one of the little creatures drops a block of coal on itself in his path, its teeny, tiny arms waving in all directions.  
  
He reaches for it without thinking, picking the coal up and turning it over in his hand, staring at it. It’s weirdly heavy for a piece of rock. He looks back up just as the sootball, now free, darts back into its hidey-hole.  
  
Roxas looks from the hole to the door, and then finally, to the boiler, and shrugs. It’s easy enough to trudge over and toss the coal in, even if the furnace is hot as hell—spitting embers at his retreating hand like an angry cat.  
  
The sootballs go on strike, collapsing all around him to squirm beneath their rocks, squeaking out little cries for help. He almost laughs, but the look Terra throws him has it sticking to the back of his throat.  
  
He’s trying to figure out how to tiptoe his way out a growing pile of rocks when a small door opens against the far side of the wall and a young woman pokes her head in.  
  
She’s gorgeous. Of course she is. Seems like everything humanoid in this bath house is irrationally attractive. Her face is pale, her features sharp—blonde hair falling neatly to her silk-clad shoulders. The kimono she’s wearing is beautiful—elaborate, expensive looking in a way that makes him wince just to imagine touching it.  
  
“Where’s Demyx?” Terra says above him as the girl shoves her way into the room, grunting when the door partially sticks. “It isn’t like you to come down this far, thought us peons were beneath you?”  
  
The girl sniffs disdainfully, carefully lifting the hem of her skirt so it doesn’t touch the floor. “Sick. Stupid sprite spends too much time in the water.” She takes a dirty bowl from Terra, exchanging it for a new one full of something steaming and delicious smelling. “Plus, Aqua wanted me to pass you a message.”  
  
There’s a change in Terra’s demeanor suddenly, his back going ramrod straight as all of his arms drop whatever they’re doing so he can turn to face her fully. She smiles at him, the smile just as sharp as the rest of her, and rises up on her tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek.  
  
“It’s not where _she_ wants to kiss you, but she insists that I’m not allowed to kiss you there, even though you’re a lonely old man with just his soot for company.” She pouts, miming tears, and rolls her eyes when Terra just turns back to his work.  
  
“Tell her not to worry, I’m not that desperate,” he says.  
  
The lady is coming closer, a basket of brightly colored candies in one hand. She laughs as she reaches in for a handful, flinging it out over the sootballs. “You’re just jealous that I get to see her every day and you don’t,” she purrs, leering over her shoulder at the boiler man.  
  
She catches sight of Roxas as she’s turning back to the sootballs, gasping. The lightning that flickers to life in her hands is as startling as it is frightening, and the sootballs all make a low mournful sound as the basket she’s holding goes up in flames.  
  
“Human!” she snarls, teeth bared. “You’re the one everyone’s looking for—”  
  
“He’s my son,” Terra interrupts nonchalantly, unperturbed at the way they both turn on him with identical incredulous looks.  
  
The girl snorts, the lightning still casting the room in a dim, blue glow. The amount of static electricity has his hairs standing on end.  In the end, she dismisses the lightning, and the room isn’t quite so stifling.  
  
“You’re kidding, right? I know how disgustingly faithful you are to Aqua and that little husk of yours, okay? Most people don’t, but I work with her, I sleep in the room next to hers. You didn’t fuck a human and you know it. You wouldn’t do that to them.”  
  
Terra shrugs, still quietly eating his dinner. “He says he wants to work here, but I’ve got all the help I need. Won’t you take him to see the Superior, Larxene? He’s a pretty tough kid. I think he can handle it.”  
  
The girl—Larxene—hisses like her hair has just caught on fire. “Okay, you are sticking to that story. What the fuck. Y’know, whatever. You want to break your girl’s heart  to save some kid’s hide, I’m not gonna stand in your way. Pretty girl like her, she deserves better than some slave anyway.”  
  
“We’re all slaves, Larxene. You’re just too blind to see it.”  
  
“Whatever, you can tote on and on about your wee baby boy, but I’m not gonna risk my life for some kid. You can march him right up there yourself. Oh wait!” she laughs, and it’s a really mean sound, making the hair on the back of Roxas’ neck stand on end. “You can’t!”  
  
Terra gives her a look, rummaging for something and—  
  
“How about a roasted newt? That enough for you? It’s a great one.”  
  
Larxene sighs, giving him a squinty-eyed look of challenge. “Two newts and a proper kiss to send back to Aqua.”  
  
The boiler man grits his teeth, but sets his dinner aside. “Fine.”  
  
She’s on him in seconds, like she’s been waiting for him to give in—pressing him back into his chair, tongue in his mouth and hands in his hair. Roxas is pretty sure she’d be in his lap if she could get up there without ripping her kimono. It’s an intense kiss, complete with what looks like some palming of the crotch action before he pushes her away with a noise of disgust. She cackles. “Can’t back out now, rock boy, I get to pass your message along just. like. that.”  
  
“If you want to get a job, you have to make a deal with Ansem. He’ll try to scare you, but he can’t actually refuse you, not once you’ve asked,” Terra explains quietly, completely ignoring the girl still crowing at his side, his brows drawn together seriously.  
  
Larxene snatches the two newts away from him, sneering, already sashaying over to the little side door. She turns back, as if she’s forgotten something, and glares at Roxas. “Come on, little human. Better follow me.”  
  
“Why are you doing this for me?” Roxas asks Terra after a moment, pausing before the door. Larxene’s making temperamental noises ahead of him, but he’s curious.  
  
Terra looks at him fondly for a moment before sighing. “You remind me of someone I used to know. Somebody I cared about a great deal. Now go, before Larxene leaves you behind.”  
  
“Thank you,” he says quietly, turning to step through the door.  
  
.  
  
The bathhouse, as it turns out, has quite a few levels. Getting through them all undetected involves a lot of subterfuge, Larxene hissing out biting comments every few seconds, and a very helpful radish spirit.  
  
By the time he actually steps out of the elevator, his nerves are shot, but not so much that he doesn’t remember to thank the radish spirit before he goes.  
  
The top level of the bathhouse is… intricate. Beautiful marble floors with elaborate patterns, marble pillars, ornamental flowers chiseled into the walls, expensive vases with bewitching patterns taller than he is. The door that stretches up before him is a red, thick wood, a particularly ugly golden door knocker set in the center.  
  
As he’s reaching for the handle the door knocker hisses at him and sneers, “Aren’t you even going to knock? Pathetic little boy.”  
  
He blinks at it for a moment as it sighs at him, the doors creaking open—all seventeen doors beyond it creaking open simultaneously. It’s more than a little eerie. The rooms that are revealed are even more beautiful, and he can’t help but gawk for a moment.  
  
“Well, come in,” a voice whispers in his ear. A shiver goes down his spine. He does not move.  
  
“I said,” the voice says again, forceful and irritated. “ _Come in_.”  
  
Something behind his navel _jerks_ and before he can so much as gasp he’s being yanked forward—through more beautiful rooms and past more elaborate vases. It yanks him down corridor after corridor before finally tossing him through a last pair of doors so forcefully that he tumbles head over heels until he’s sprawled on his ass in front of a huge fireplace.  
  
When he manages to shake himself free of the dizziness there’s a man glaring down at him with wolfish features, sharp golden eyes, and blue hair that falls to a sharply tapered waist. He’s shirtless, which seems to be a theme in this place, and there are bloody scratches down his chest. Now that he’s really looking, Roxas can’t help but notice he’s looking a bit flushed, his hair faintly tousled in a way that usually means someone just had their hands running through it.  
  
“To me, Saix,” a voice says smoothly, syrupy-sweet like caramel.  
  
The blue-haired man narrows his eyes, but after another moment, he goes.  
  
There’s another man in the room, sitting behind an enormous desk. He’s got a pair of spectacles perched on his nose, his long white hair contrasting sharply against his dark skin. He’s attractive enough, wearing some form of old fashioned suit. There’s a cravat lying abandoned on the desk, and his collar is wrinkled and gaping open, leaving the trail of bite marks down his throat bare for the world to see.  
  
Roxas fights back a blush, swallows, and says quickly, “I was wondering if you could give me a job.”  
  
The room goes quiet, the scritching of the pencil coming to a stop as it snaps in the man’s—Ansem, presumably—hand. He finally looks up from his work, eyes shockingly gold, and cuts a hand through the air.  
  
Just like that, Roxas’ lips are melted together, like in the Matrix when the Smiths took away Neo’s mouth. Now he knows how Neo felt, because suddenly not having a mouth is terrifying. For a moment he fights to breathe, choking, until he remembers to just stay calm and breathe through his nose.  
  
“I really don’t want to hear such a ridiculous request,” the man says simply, going back to his work. Idly, he sets a bag of gold into a little box at his side. “You’re weak. Human. We can’t have you creatures stinking up the place.”  
  
He shuts the lid to the box with a sharp snap and looks at Roxas again, setting his chin on his folded hands. “This is a bathhouse for the spirits. They come here to relax and rejuvenate. You humans always make such messes of things. Look at that sibling of yours and his little slut friends—”  
  
Roxas blinks. _Friends_? There had just been him, Sora, and Riku.  
  
“—gobbling the food up like pigs. Despicable. They got what they deserved.”  
  
Roxas whimpers a little, squirming.  
  
Ansem leans back in his chair, lighting a cigarette using a flame at the tip of his finger and taking a drag. He chuckles, blowing smoke through his nose as he regards Roxas with an amused eye. “I can see you shaking from here, boy. I’m impressed you even made it this far, though I doubt you made it on your own.”  
  
He hunches forward, smile broadening. “Just who was it, sweet boy? We simply must thank them.”  
  
Another motion, and Roxas has his mouth back. “Please, just give me a job!” he shouts, red in the face.  
  
“Don’t say that!” Ansem snaps, slamming his fist down on the desk and scattering papers everywhere.  
  
“I just want to work!” Roxas insists, shouting even louder when the man lets out a roar and launches himself at Roxas.  
  
“Why in the world should I give you a job?” Ansem purrs, one hand suddenly at the small of his back and the other cradling his jaw. He’s too close, far too close, Roxas can feel the other man’s breath on his lips. “Anyone can see you’re just another lazy, no good human with appalling manners. This is a very high-class establishment, I won’t have some boy fucking that up. There’s no job for you here, now the question is—are you another piglet for my pens or shall I eat your heart with some caviar for my breakfast?”  
  
He smiles and leans even closer, their lips all but brushing as the hand cradling his jaw moves to wrap around his throat. “Or, I could give you the most difficult job I’ve got, and work you to your very last breath. Not very many of my courtesans want to spread their legs for the onis—nasty creatures, you know. Have a thing for eviscerating my girls and fucking their entrails. What say you, how would you like to spread your legs for demons until they fuck you to death?”  
  
He feels faint. He’s going to be sick all over this crazy asshole’s expensive rug and then he’s going to get eaten with gross fish eggs. Before he can answer, there’s a wailing sound from the next room—painfully high pitched. As Roxas watches, flabbergasted, things start to vibrate on their shelves, mirrors crack, glasses shatter.  
  
All the rage suddenly goes out of Ansem and he slumps, heaving a sudden sigh that gusts across Roxas’ neck.  
  
“Oh wonderful, you’ve woken my witch,” he deadpans, releasing Roxas and striding over to the curtains that separate the rooms. There’s a nasty crack from inside, like a hand across the face. The crying stops.  
  
“Why are you still here?” Ansem demands, poking his head back through the curtains. “Don’t you know when to flee for your life?”  
  
Sensing a chance, Roxas takes a deep breath and shouts, as loud as he can, “Won’t you just give me a damn job?!”  
  
Immediately, the wailing starts up again. Wood is starting to break and Roxas is pretty damn sure his ears are bleeding. “I’m not leaving until you give me a job,” he screams and Ansem, looking somewhat frantic, waves him down. In the corner, Saix is growling at him, blood trickling from his pointed ears but he’s making no moves towards him, so Roxas is pretty sure he’s okay for now.  
  
“Fine, if you insist,” Ansem hisses, livid. “Just shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”  
  
He disappears into the room again. Moments later, the sobbing stops.  
  
Roxas stares at the swaying curtain, disbelieving, until a paper tugs itself free of the stack on Ansem’s desk and drops itself into his hands. A pen follows.  
  
“That’s your contract,” Ansem says as he emerges, waving a hand to piece all the broken furniture back together. Roxas watches as everything settles itself back into place perfectly. “Sign your name away, and I’ll put you to work. One complaint and I’ll have your heart on my desk within an hour, understand? Now sign.”  
  
Roxas signs against the wall, his katakana ugly because his hand won’t stop shaking. When he’s done, it’s hideous, but it’s there: ロクサス, Roxas.  
  
Ansem laughs when the paper is back in his hands. “Roxas, is it?”  
  
Smirking, he curls his hand just over the paper, and Roxas watches as the letters drift up and into it. When he’s done, the only thing that remains is the サ. Sa.  
  
“Sa, I like it. Or perhaps, Sai?” Ansem bites down on one plush lip and then rolls his eyes, and with another wave of his hand there’s another letter: サイ. “Much better, rolls off the tongue. Be thankful, I could have left you with Sa.”  
  
“You called for me?” someone says from the doorway and Roxas turns—  
  
He almost gives it all away then, nearly shouts out when he sees Axel standing there, tall and blank-faced. The singed outfit he’d been wearing before has been replaced with a pristine black hakama paired with a rust-red haori. It suits him, even if the colors wash him out a bit. He manages to bite his lip in time, listening as Ansem tells Axel about his contract, that he’s to get Roxas a job at once.  
  
“Right,” Axel drawls, an eyebrow raised. “What’s your name?” he asks, turning to Roxas.  
  
“Ro-” he starts, cutting himself off sharply when he sees the look on Ansem’s face. “It’s Sai.”  
  
Axel snaps a nod, turning to go. “Alright, well, follow me, small-fry.”  
  
He goes, thankfully, sparing one last look back at the office just as Saix is climbing into Ansem’s lap.  
  
He walks more quickly.  
  
.  
  
The ride down is awkward, the scent of Roxas’ anxiety heavy in the air. It’s cloying, like a heady perfume, and it makes him want to sink his teeth into the boy’s flesh. He smells like _prey_ and Axel can’t put a stop to the smell because Ansem has eyes and ears everywhere.  
  
“Don’t talk to me,” he snaps when Roxas breathes his name, soft and uncertain, into the silence of the empty elevator. “And you will address me as Master, no more, no less.”  
  
Convincing the frogs to take him is difficult—no one wants a human in their department, they don’t give two shits until he tells them that the kid is already under contract.  
  
“Three days of eating our food and his smell will go away. If he doesn’t work hard, roast him, boil him, see if I give two shits. Now get back to work, where the hell is Demyx?”  
  
“What?” Demyx gasps from the doorway. He sniffles a little, the bags under his eyes a little too pronounced. “You’re giving me the stanky human?”  
  
Axel shrugs, already walking away. “You said you wanted an assistant. Now you have one.”  
  
“You owe me for this one, Axel!” he hears Demyx holler as he rounds the corner. Quickly, he whispers a spell for invisibility and loops right back around. They’re easy to find with the way Demyx is carrying on, and Axel catches up just as Larxene ambushes them.  
  
“I can’t believe you pulled it off,” she hisses, punching Roxas in the shoulder. He staggers, catching himself with a hand on Demyx’s shoulder. “You’re such a little dumbass, I was worried I’d have to go tell Terra that I got his precious baby boy killed.”  
  
She laughs as Demyx looks between them, obviously confused. “Wait, this kid is the boiler dude’s son? I thought he had a boner the size of the river Styx for that water nymph on your level?”  
  
Larxene rolls her eyes. “He’s not Terra’s son, you jackass. Just look at him.”  
  
Demyx stares, Roxas shifting uncomfortably under their combined gazes. “I don’t get it,” Demyx finally says.  
  
She punches him. “Are you kidding me? He’s like the spitting image of Terra and Aqua’s third wheel—the little wind spirit, y’know, _him_.”  
  
“Oh,” Demyx says, eyes wide. They both look back at Roxas.  
  
“I have no idea who the hell you’re talking about,” Roxas admits, looking unsure as to whether he should be backing away or laughing along with some kind of joke.  
  
Larxene grins. “That’s okay, you don’t need to. Now! Demyx is going to show you the ropes down here for a couple days, but Ansem specifically told me that you’re up to our level for training within the week.”  
  
Demyx turns to gape at her, and it’s all Axel can do not to drop the illusion. “He’s gonna be a bit of a jack of all trades, I guess. Boy, you must have really pissed him off. I’ve never seen the boss so insistent on adding another whore to his ranks.”  
  
Roxas blanches, going grey so quickly that Axel starts forward, as if to catch him if he falls. Larxene actually looks a little offended. “Don’t worry, squirt, it isn’t all that bad. I won’t let any onis at you, you hear? I don’t know what all Ansem told you, but I won’t allow it.”  
  
Demyx pats Roxas’ shoulder when he still looks like he’s going to pass out. He sways a bit under Demyx’s hand. “Don’t worry, it really isn’t all that bad. If you’ve got Larxene teaching you the ropes, you’ll be prepared for anything they throw at you.”  
  
“I don’t feel very good,” Roxas says quietly, swaying forward.  
  
Axel lets them catch him. He has a couple plans to put into action.  
  
.  
  
“So, you know Axel, huh?” Roxas asks later, once the feeling in his stomach has eased from hurling imminent to only slightly queasy. Demyx hums, still rummaging through the cabinet for a suitable uniform. So far they’ve all been too fucking big, because apparently, Roxas is puny.  
  
“Here’s your apron, you gotta wash it yourself. Don’t let it get too smelly or one of the frogs will kill you.” He hisses and tosses another top to the floor, taking the time to stomp on it before going back to rummaging. “And yeah, I know Axel. What about him? He’s a dick.”  
  
“So… there aren’t two of him, then?”  
  
Demyx gives him a horrified look. “Oh _rivers and spirits_ , that would be _horrible_.”  
  
“Why?” Roxas asks, perplexed, as Demyx flings a pair of pants at his head.  
  
 _“Why_?!” Demyx shrieks, voice going shrill and near painful. The dude sleeping in the far corner of the room stirs, grunting. “He’s Ansem’s _henchman_. He’s the Flurry of the Dancing Flames, kid. He’s what happens to the dudes who piss Ansem off. Don’t trust a damn thing that asshole says.”  
  
Roxas grimaces, his stomach turning to ice as the nausea comes back with a vengeance. He thinks of the soft smile on Axel’s face before, the way he’d gently coaxed Roxas into eating that stupid berry, how he’d done so much to get Roxas to Terra safely. Could that really have been all a trick? Some sick joke before they eat him? Maybe emotion makes you taste better or something. Fuck, he’s gonna be sick.  
  
He doesn’t cry. He just… doesn’t. He’s just momentarily so overwhelmed that he has a very quiet panic attack, hunching over with his head between his legs so he doesn’t hurl all over Demyx’s backside.  
  
“Woah, little dude, you okay?” he hears Demyx ask over the roaring noise in his head. He shakes it, trying to clear the fog wrapped around his brain, but all he succeeds in doing is making himself dizzy.  
  
“Shut yer damn mouth, water sprite,” a gruff voice rasps. From the corner of his eye, Roxas can just make out the lump in the corner sitting up.  
  
“You shut it, Xiggy, the new kid’s having some kind of attack.”  
  
He thinks the other man—spirit, whatever—might be squinting at him, but he can’t really tell. “Well, shut him up before I do it for him. I’ve gotta relieve Xaldin in a couple hours and you can bet your sparkly ass that I’m gonna get myself some shut eye before that happens, so help me.”  
  
“I’m okay,” he tries to say, but it comes out shaky and unsure. Demyx pats his back, making sympathetic noises.  
  
“It’ll be all right, little man. If it’s the… end of the week that’s bothering you, don’t worry about it too much. Larxene might be a bitch, but she won’t let you get hurt. Neither will Aqua, for that matter, especially if Terra’s vouching for you.”  
  
Roxas shrugs jerkily, taking deep breaths through his nose. It isn’t so much the end of the week that’s bothering him so much as this entire situation. The fact that at the end of the week he’s probably going to be getting fucked by spirits is just the rotten cherry on top of the already disgustingly freezer-burnt sundae.  
  
“Whatever,” he says, straightening up. Breathing doesn’t hurt anymore, so he thinks that the panic attack might be over. Maybe.  
  
“Sleep might help?” Demyx says, and oh, looks like he finally found a shirt for him. Roxas accepts it, biting his lip. Yeah, sleep sounds good. If it’ll come to him.  
  
He sighs. “Okay, then. Point the way.”  
  
.  
  
Axel visits Roxas just after dawn, coming directly from seeing Ansem off. He isn’t very surprised to see the kid shivering, still wide awake. If anything, he smells more fearful now—the entire room a noxious mixture of fear and guilt. It chokes him up a bit, makes him hesitate before stepping inside.  
  
He tiptoes around Xaldin and Lexaeus, crouching down before Roxas and setting a hand on his back. The flinch the kid makes causes some small part of him to shrivel inward. He makes his voice go soft to make up for the way he’d spoken to the kid earlier, his hand rubbing soothing circles into the kid’s shoulder blade. “Meet me at the bridge and I’ll take you to your brother and his friend,” he breathes, hardly recognizing his own voice for its softness.  
  
He leaves the same way he came in, his feet silent as he paces through the halls. The bathhouse is always quiet this early in the morning, everyone still sleeping off the night’s activities, and this morning is no exception. He passes Xigbar, who snaps him a lazy salute where he’s half-asleep at his post just inside the entrance.  
  
The sun is bright for it being so early when he reaches the bridge, still hanging low in the sky. He doesn’t often go out in the day and for a moment, he regrets that. The flowers are in full bloom and everything smells of petals and the simmering meat in the kitchens. It’s early enough that they must have just started making food for the night’s spirits, the roasts sizzling as they soak in the juices.  
  
A movement catches his eye halfway over the bridge and when he turns, to his surprise he sees the same dark shape from the day before. He stops, squinting at it, and startles when blue eyes peer back at him.  
  
“Why aren’t you inside?” he asks it, taking a step closer. It flinches, its face briefly catching the sunlight—  
  
It’s a girl—her face pale, hair dark, blue eyes faintly lost. He wonders what kind of spirit she is.  
  
“Hey,” he starts, taking another step forward, hand outstretched. Just before his hand closes around her arm, she disappears with a high fearful noise. He blinks at the open air before him, hand dropping.  
  
“What are you doing?” Roxas asks from behind him. He jumps, heart pounding, and spins around, fire leaping to the palm of his hand.  
  
Roxas blinks at him, hand up to shade his eyes from the sun. He glances at the fire in Axel’s open palm, then back to Axel. “Uh, bad time?” he asks, nervously taking a step back.  
  
Axel shakes his head, trying to clear away the memory of weird little girls lurking in places they really shouldn’t be. “No, don’t worry about it,” he says, smiling when Roxas continues to stare at him. “Here, just follow me.”  
  
He takes Roxas through the scenic route, the flowery perfume of the gardens heavy in the air. It’s gorgeous, always is, but he doesn’t have time to stop and show Roxas around. Ansem won’t be gone for long, and soon enough, Demyx and the others will be waking, ready for a new day of work to start. He can’t allow Roxas to be missing when that happens.  
  
“We really don’t have a lot of time,” he says ruefully, pushing a branch of overzealous azalea out of his way. “Trust me, if you’re found here, it’s not gonna be good. Just, don’t ever come here by yourself, okay? I don’t want you getting eaten because I wasn’t there to save you.”  
  
He leads them down the hill to the swine pens, wrinkling his nose at how awful they smell. Roxas doesn’t seem to notice, because once they’ve reached the shade of the pens, he only has eyes for the two newest additions, still sleeping off all the food they’d scarfed down the previous day.  
  
“Sora,” Roxas whispers, approaching the fence keeping the two pigs separate from all the others. His knuckles go white-knuckled around it as he leans forward. “Sora!” he repeats, louder than what’s probably safe. “Riku!”  
  
One pig’s ear twitches lazily, but that’s about it.  
  
“Sorry, kid. They ate too much last night, they’re probably not gonna respond.” Axel hesitates, watching the way that Roxas is staring at them, his face pale.  
  
“They don’t remember being human,” he finally admits. “It’s part of the spell. So you’re gonna have to remember which ones they are once they get moved in with the rest of the pigs.”  
  
Roxas’ breath hitches and he takes a step back, lowering himself down until he can look through the bars at them. One pig snorts, it’s ear swiveling towards Roxas again, like it knows who he is but is just too damn tired to care.  
  
“I’ll get you two out of here,” Roxas says softly. A sad smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “I promise. So don’t eat the way you usually do, Sora. I know you. You’ll get fat in no time and I won’t be able to save you if you get eaten.”  
  
Briefly, he rests his head against the bar, eyes shiny with unshed tears. He wipes at them, slowly getting back to his feet and doing an about-face, sprinting off into the gardens.  
  
Axel follows slowly, remembering the last time that Larxene had yelled at him for not giving one of her girls enough time to recover before demanding she go back to work. The girl had just lost a child, the oni who’d impregnated her insisting that either she get rid of it or it would get rid of her. Larxene had been furious with him, shoving him out of the girl’s room and into hers where she’d shot him through with a shit ton of lightning and left him smoking.  
  
The situations weren’t entirely similar, but that one experience had been enough to tell him that sometimes when people are sad, it’s best to give them time. So he drags his feet, taking the time to trail his hands along the leaves and flower petals of the rhododendrons, watching the clouds move across the sky.  
  
The kid didn’t go very far, crouched on a cliff at the southernmost side of the gardens, looking out over the train tracks with haunted blue eyes.  
  
Wordlessly, Axel pulls a lump of fabric out of his shirt, passing the kids clothes to him—the strangely textured pants folded under the equally strange shirt. They smell of jasmine, spring water, and very faintly of Axel’s skin.  
  
Roxas takes them, staring. He looks puzzled. “I thought Larxene threw these away last night,” he says, stroking a hand over the fabric. Axel shrugs.  
  
“You’ll need them to get home, Roxas,” he says. “So I saved them for you.”  
  
The kid blinks at him, confused, and then realization dawns in his eyes. “Roxas,” he whispers. “That’s my name. My—I almost forgot. How could I forget? I’ve only been here for a day.”  
  
Axel crouches down next to him, pulling a neatly wrapped package of rice balls out from where they’d been tucked against his belly. He offers one to Roxas, pleased when the kid takes it from him without a hint of hesitation.  
  
“That’s how he controls you,” he says, looking away and watching an ant crawl up a blade of grass. “Don’t forget your name. While you’re here, you’re Sai, but whatever you do, don’t forget your real name. If you forget completely, you’ll never find your way home.”  
  
He hesitates, before adding softly, “I’ve tried pretty much everything to remember mine.”  
  
Roxas flinches beside him. “You don’t remember your name?”  
  
“No, but I remember yours,” he shrugs again, pointing at the rice ball still in the kid’s hand. “You really should eat that. There’s a spell on it to help you get back your strength. Get rid of those jelly legs you’ve been stumbling around on.”  
  
Roxas snorts. “I’ve been perfectly graceful.”  
  
Axel just looks at him. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you were wobbling after me through the gardens. You haven’t slept, you probably haven’t eaten anything since that berry, and you’re in a world completely different than the one you came from. Eat it or I’ll shove it down your throat myself.”  
  
“Fine,” Roxas says, rolling his eyes and taking one huge bite. And then another. And another.  
  
His eyes start to well up with tears again and Axel can tell he’s trying to fight them back, eating slowly and methodically. Halfway through, the tears start rolling down his face. By the time he’s done, he’s sobbing quietly.  
  
“Spell to get my strength back,” he mutters through his tears. “Bullshit. You put a spell to make me cry on this.”  
  
Axel shrugs. “I don’t actually think a spell like that exists,” he remarks casually, offering Roxas another one, which he takes with a very suspicious, watery glare. “But crying is good for you.”  
  
He finishes the second one and is halfway through the third before he turns and buries his face in Axel’s shoulder, muffling the sobs with some very expensive fabric. Axel strokes his hair and wonders where his life went so wildly out of control.  
  
.  
  
“I’ve gotta go,” Axel says to him once they’ve reached the bridge again. Roxas’ eyes are still red and puffy, and he feels like the biggest dumbass. Crying all over the guy he’s just met. He hasn’t cried in years. He doesn’t give a shit what Axel says, he put some kind of waterworks spell on that rice, he just knows it. “Just stay out of trouble, okay?” Axel finishes saying, hip-checking Roxas through the gate as he goes.  
  
Roxas rolls his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. And, look, you’re a good guy, okay? Even if you gave me sobbing roofies. So… thanks.”  
  
He doesn’t look back until he’s across the bridge, and when he does, it’s to the sight of a faint ribbon of red twirling upwards in the sky. There’s a glimmer of red and black scales in the sun, and his breath catches in his throat.  
  
“You’re a fucking _dragon_?” he whispers incredulously, slightly frustrated. He remembers the scales that had crept across Axel’s face that first time, but he’d been freaked out and tired and had pretty much convinced himself he was seeing things.  
  
He shakes his head, staring as the dragon fades from view. “Ugh, you asshole,” he hisses, tearing himself away and heading back the way he came.  
  
He doesn’t fall asleep in Terra’s boiler room, arms wrapped around the clothes that still kind of smell like home and head pillowed on the uncomfortable floor, lulled to sleep by the sound of Terra snoring. Of course he doesn’t.  
  
It’s raining when he wakes back up, the sky faintly dark, making him unsure of whether he’s slept the day away or if the storm is just that bad.  
  
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” Terra says, glancing fondly at him as he stretches one ridiculously long arm past Roxas’ head to get at the little cubby of herbs behind him. “Have a nice nap?”  
  
“What time is it?” he grumbles  
  
“Late. Your shift is probably gonna start soon,” Terra says, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. Roxas curses, stumbling to his feet and then over to where Terra is, giving him a strange look. He plucks the cigarette from one of Terra’s hands and stuffs the end of it into his mouth, taking a deep, deep drag and letting it out in a sigh of bliss.  
  
The smoke tastes weird, nothing like the cigarettes he’d smoke back home, but kind of… like a weird blend of clove and menthol. It’s strange, so he takes another hit, rolling the flavor against the back of his tongue. Weird.  
  
“You done stealing my smokes or should I light another one?” Terra asks, amused as Roxas takes one last drag of the cigarette.  
  
Roxas shakes his head, passing the cigarette back over.  
  
“Naw, I should probably get up there before they miss me,” he says, huffing a frustrated breath. Whatever, he can totally do this.  
  
.  
  
He watches Roxas go about his days. It isn’t subtle, the way he’s pining after some human kid he’s known for a few days at most, but somehow Roxas feels… familiar. Like they’ve known each other for longer than just these last few days.  
  
It’s not the fact that Axel saved him when he was a kid either, because that same feeling of familiarity had been what stopped him back then. It itches beneath his skin, irritating, and he knows he should remember something this important. He just knows it.  
  
He spends time with Roxas when he can, in between missions. He’ll get back, covered in blood, and he’ll have just enough time to bathe before the maddening itch takes him to Roxas’ side. It’s dangerous, what he’s doing. Ansem is far from blind, and must know what Axel’s doing. After all, cloaking spells only go so far.  
  
He’s still stinking faintly of blood, the image of some imp’s heart clutched in his claws fresh in his mind when he goes to find Roxas this time.  
  
He finds him wandering the halls, his vision all but obscured by the heaping pile of… something that he’s got in his hands. Axel grins. He doesn’t even need a cloaking spell to fool the boy this time. He just sidesteps around him, and when he’s sure that Roxas is off in his own little world, yanks him into the mouth of a smaller hallway.  
  
Roxas yelps, dropping the plants, and looks like he’s about to pull back for a punch when he sees Axel. His shoulders slump out of the defensive hunch, a sigh of relief huffing past his lips. “You asshole,” he breathes, his hand going to his heart. “You scared me to death.”  
  
Axel just smirks at him, pleased, and squeezes the wrist he’s still holding onto. “I want to show you something,” he whispers, wrapping a cloaking spell around them when a frog looks curiously down the hallway.  
  
Roxas’ mouth twists into a grimace. “Now?” he whines. “I’m working, Axel.”  
  
Axel shrugs. “It has to be now. Don’t worry, Ansem won’t turn you into a pig for one day of playing hookie. And you know Demyx will cover for you.”  
  
He’s acting reckless, he knows he is. But there’s something utterly intoxicating about Roxas—the scent of his skin, and the way it’s always a fight to get him to really smile. They’ve known each other for days, but it feels like lifetimes, like the timeline is stretching out before him, showing him where to pinpoint the places they’ve been, the lives they’ve lived.  
  
He shakes his head, and the image is gone.  
  
“Fine,” Roxas is saying, brushing the last of whatever plant he was carrying from his hands. “But it better be cool.”  
  
“Okay, yeah, so this is pretty cool,” Roxas says half an hour later.  
  
The roof of the bathhouse is bathed in fading rays of sunlight, the tiles warm from a day in the sun. The ice cream Axel’s procured for them is from a vendor on the edge of the slums, near where he’d first found Roxas. It’s salty and sweet, a blue that almost matches the shade of Roxas’ eyes.  
  
It had been a trial getting Roxas up here without using his serpent form. They’d had to take the elevator to Ansem’s floor at the top of the bathhouse and sneak through a window in one of the fancy rooms leading to his office. It was silly and beyond stupid, but Roxas had giggled like a schoolboy as they snuck around Ansem’s sentries, his breathing going sharp and stuttery when they opened the window to look down on a forty story drop. The fear was fragrant, making Axel’s throat itch, but he’d leaned forward, nosing the skin at the back of Roxas’ neck.  
  
“Don’t worry,” he’d breathed into Roxas’ ear. “I won’t let you fall.”  
  
The human had shivered, his cheeks going red, but he’d swung himself out onto the ladder anyway. “You better keep that promise,” he’d said, grimacing as he looked past Axel swinging out after him.  
  
Now they’re laid out onto the warmth of the roof, treats in hand, the sunlight all around them. He doesn’t come out here often enough anymore, too busy bending over backwards for Ansem. But he’s glad he’s here now, watching the warm glow of the setting sun with Roxas.  
  
The colors are ever changing, soft pinks and violets one minute, gold and red the next. He can feel the heat of Roxas’ body against his side, and the places where they touch burn bright, a sweet starburst of feeling.  
  
“Hey Roxas, bet you don’t know why the sun sets red.”  
  
Roxas glances at him, eyebrow raised, puzzled. “Sure I do. We learn this shit in middle school back in the human world.”  
  
Axel chuckles. “Yeah, well, they don’t teach it right. Once upon a time, the sun goddess Amaterasu quarrelled with her brother Susano-O. It was a stupid argument, but fierce, her brother rampaging across the land in his anger. So Amaterasu, tired of his noise, retreated to a cave, and there she stayed—her disappearance depriving the world of her light. Demons ruled the earth for eons, until finally, the other gods gathered together to try and lure her out.”  
  
He swallows, watching Roxas out of the corner of his eye. The boy is staring at him, eyes curious, his lips parted. As Axel watches, Roxas licks them, biting down on the lower one after. He coughs, thoroughly distracted.  
  
“Anyhow, the gods tried everything they could. They gathered a great many cocks together, having them crow outside of her cave, but to no avail. Finally, Ama-no-uzume succeeded, where all others had failed, placing a mirror against a sakaki tree facing the cave. She danced, disrobing as she went, and the other gods were so amused by her lewd behaviour that they roared with laughter. Curious as to how the gods could find merriment in a world without light, Amaterasu peered out of her cave, a streak of light escaping that we now call dawn.”  
  
Roxas can’t seem to decide between looking at him and looking at the sunset, glancing between them. He takes a bite of his ice cream, and as Axel watches, a droplet traces the curve of his jaw.  
  
“What she saw was her own reflection in the mirror, and so enthralled by her own beauty, she drew closer for a better look. The gods quickly threw a shimenawa before the entrance to the cave to prevent her from returning, but they didn’t have to worry, for as they watched, the sky blushed red, so great was her attraction to herself. Every night since, she has peered into a mirror before surrendering the sky to her brother Tsukiyume, and the sky bleeds red once more.”  
  
“So,” Roxas says after a moment. “What you’re telling me is that the sun sets red because the sun goddess wants to bang herself.”  
  
He shrugs. “That’s the story.”  
  
“I call bullshit,” Roxas hisses, getting up in his face. Axel laughs as Roxas waves his ice cream at him, catching his wrist just before the bar can hit him in the cheek. They sit there, staring at each other, Roxas nearly in his lap and Axel not even daring to breathe. They’re so close, close enough to kiss, enough that Axel can feel Roxas’ breath against his lips.  
  
The silence swells between them, Roxas’ own cheeks flushing red the longer they sit there, unmoving. “No bullshit,” Axel finally breathes, unable to take it much longer. Roxas lets out a shivering little sigh, pulling back just far enough that they aren’t breathing the same air.  
  
“Whatever,” Roxas rasps, slowly pulling his knees up to his chest. “I still don’t believe you.”  
  
The laugh that falls from his lips is strained, a choked thing that catches in his lungs. “You don’t have to believe me, it’s just a story.”  
  
Together, they watch the spirit world fade into red and then into purple, and then finally, they turn their gaze heavenward, to the stars.  
  
.  
  
The days pass slowly in the Spirit World. He learns the ins and outs of cleaning baths, scrubbing floors until his knuckles and palms are skinned and blistered. Demyx attempts to teach him how to play the sitar. Luxord succeeds at teaching him to play poker. Lexaeus lends him books on the slow days and Roxas learns their languages, slow and steady, feudal tales unfolding across the pages. Xigbar even teaches him how to shoot his strange gun, the laser sights and trigger at odds with a world that seems so old.  
  
When the time comes, Larxene teaches him some things as well. Her hands are soft at first, gentle when they touch his trembling body. It’s not that he’s a virgin, he’s nineteen years old, of course he’s had sex. But as she tells him, there’s a big difference between having sex and making it into an art.  
  
She teaches him how to make himself last longer, how to go down on a chick properly, how to touch the spirits that aren’t quite human. She presses slippery, efficient fingers inside of him and shows him where his prostate is, and then she calls Demyx in and teaches Roxas how to take a cock like a pro.  
  
The days that he spends in Larxene’s room are strange, often awkward. He meets Terra’s girl the day that Larxene is showing him how to ride someone with abandon, his legs wrapped around her hips as he rocks back down onto her fake dick. He’s moaning, head thrown back and back arched the way she’d taught him to when a blue-haired woman walks in and stops in the doorway, face gone white.  
  
Larxene gasps below him and flails a bit, knocking him out of her lap. He winces as her dick slides out of him, and watches as she crosses the room, fake dick bouncing enthusiastically. It looks kind of silly, but he catches onto the seriousness of the situation when he hears how panicked Larxene’s voice has gone.  
  
“It’s not him,” she’s insisting, her hand wrapped around the other woman’s wrist. “He’s the human that Ansem saddled us with, he’s not _him_ I promise.”  
  
The other woman sniffs, crinkling her nose a bit in the now familiar gesture of ‘ew gross a human’ and crosses to the other side of the bed, sitting down heavily as she stares at him. It’s still weird, being naked in front of another person, so he hurries to cover his dick, cheeks flared red.  
  
She’s still staring. “How do they look so similar?” she whispers, and Larxene sits down beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.  
  
“I don’t know,” Larxene replies, unconcerned with her own nudity. “But it isn’t Ven, okay? Even I wouldn’t do that to you, Aqua.”  
  
Aqua snorts, obviously trying to clear the subject from her mind. “So what are you doing with him?”  
  
“Training, obviously. Ansem wants him as a jack of all trades, so guess who gets to make sure he isn’t a sloppy fuck.” Roxas shifts awkwardly under their gazes, his ass slipping a little on Larxene’s silk sheets. After a minute of awkward silence, Larxene grins.  
  
“Wanna help?” she asks innocently.  
  
The noise that comes out of his mouth is probably pretty embarrassing.  
  
.  
  
There’s a rumor of a little hut in Swamp Bottom and the magician who lives there.  
  
A rumor of a fabled golden seal, and the magic it possesses.  
  
With its power, he might just have the strength to free Roxas.  
  
.  
  
Fucking spirits on the clock is completely different than fucking Larxene or Demyx or even Aqua. Suddenly all of Larxene’s lessons on how to seem interested when you really aren’t make sense. His first time is with a tall kitsune, her hair red as autumn leaves, her nose pointed. There are whiskers on her cheeks, fox ears on her head, and a bushy tail emerging from just beneath her spine.  
  
She’s… nice. As far as first times go, he lucked out with her. She’s patient with him the few times where his mind blanks out and he forgets what to do, climbing on top of him and riding him until he whines. She’s mostly human, which is good. He’s seen some of the spirits lingering outside of Larxene and Aqua’s rooms and knows that humanoid isn’t going to be the norm.  
  
He makes her come three times, twice when he’s inside of her and once with his face between her legs.  
  
He feels really great about it too, until an hour later his next client comes in, a grinning creature who appears to be mostly lizard.  
  
It’s not okay. He’s not okay, and afterwards Aqua comes in and shushes him as he cries, ignoring the frog outside the room insisting that they both have new customers.  
  
He recovers.  
  
He’s still not okay with it, but Larxene starts directing the traffic to his bedroom, vetoing most of the non-humanoids. The only spirits she allows through who aren’t human in appearance are either close enough or customers that she trusts not to hurt him.  
  
He spends his days cleaning floors and baths with Demyx and the nights spreading his legs for various spirits and when he has the occasional day off, he goes to the gardens with Axel. Axel, who looks sickened from what little Roxas tells him about what’s going on. Axel, who hugs him and reminds him of his name, petting his hair. He brings picnics sometimes and they eat on the cliff facing away from the bathhouse—sweetmeats, fish, and sticky rice, savory onion soups, and salads with almost too sweet dressing.  
  
He doesn’t see Axel as often as he’d like, not like this, where the silence is comfortable between the two of them. If he ends up seeing Axel around the bathhouse, he’s cold and aloof, and yeah, kind of an asshole.  
  
The one time that he sees Axel on Larxene’s floor, he’s mortified. It isn’t often that he gets more than one customer at a time, but this time he’s got two of them—a mated pair. The female is as close to human as she can safely make herself, the only thing betraying the illusion is the powder blue of her skin and the scales going from her belly to her unmentionables, like some weird treasure trail. He’s got her spread out on his sheets and moaning, his face between her legs as he does his damn best to ignore her mate’s cock inside of him when the door opens.  
  
He doesn’t know why Axel is on this floor—doesn’t know if he was looking for Roxas or Larxene or if he just wanted to get fucked. For a moment, there’s a flicker of rage on Axel’s face as he takes in the scene, the amabie thrashing beneath him and her mate behind him, and then his face goes blank when the female takes notice.  
  
She doesn’t quite shriek, but the noise she makes draws the male’s attention. They both hunker down hissing as Axel’s face twists into a sneer.  
  
“Don’t worry,” he drawls. “I’ll wait my turn.”  
  
.  
  
He doesn’t wait his turn, fuck, he doesn’t know what he was thinking, coming up here like this. As if Roxas would even be in these rooms if he wasn’t involved with a customer. He encounters Larxene in the halls, who pales when she sees his face, and quickly strides over to him.  
  
“What did you do?” she hisses, teeth bared and static electricity making her hair hover in a cloud above her head. “What the hell did you do to him?”  
  
“Nothing,” he bites out through gritted teeth. “Got an accidental show. I’m leaving now.”  
  
“Oh, no you don’t,” she snarls, slamming her fist into the wood beside his head. “You don’t get to do that to the kid. Do you even _know_ how much he talks about you? He _doesn’t shut up_!”  
  
She takes a deep breath and pats his cheek. “I’m the only one here that knows you aren’t the asshole everyone thinks you are and I’m not fucking blind. You like that kid. You’re fucking gone on him, and you know what? He is too. So you’re gonna turn right back around and get your ass back to his room, wait for the amabies to finish and you’re either gonna talk to him or fuck him, understand?”  
  
“I forget sometimes how intense you are,” he says, inspecting the smoking wall behind him. There’s a singed black mark against the wood in the shape of her hand.  
  
“Yeah, well, we used to be pretty intense,” she sighs, pushing back and away from him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an asshole waiting in my room just begging to get fucked.”  
  
With that, she flounces away, leaving him alone in a hallway that isn’t quite soundproof enough to block out all the moans.  
  
Roxas’ door is still shut when he reaches it, so he sighs quietly and hunkers down to wait.  
  
He doesn’t actually have to wait very long. The amabies when they emerge are back in their normal forms, covered from head to foot in iridescent scales. The only thing missing are their tails, but then, it would probably be difficult to get around outside of the water with those. The male gives him a dirty look as Roxas follows them out, all professional smiles and draped in a blue silk robe that was probably Larxene’s at one point. It’s too long on him, the fabric pooling around his ankles as he steps forward to kiss the female on the cheek.  
  
He doesn’t actually notice Axel until his guests have wandered down the hall, his eyes widening when he takes note of Axel against the wall.  
  
“I thought you left,” he says, wrapping the robe tighter around him. Axel shrugs.  
  
“I said I’d wait.”  
  
Roxas makes a face, then wordlessly beckons Axel inside.  
  
His room is like most of the others on this floor—relatively spacious and dwarfed by the large bed in the center of the room. It isn’t quite as elaborate as Larxene’s, probably because he doesn’t actually live here like she does. He flops onto the bed, sighing as he pats the spot next to him.  
  
Axel sits, careful not to let their skin touch in case Roxas freaks out.  
  
“So,” the kid says after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Axel shifts a little, turning his knees away from Roxas’ body. The whole room smells like sex and Roxas; it’s distracting. “I was gonna ask you about rescheduling for tomorrow. Something came up.”  
  
Roxas gives him a look. “Okay,” he says, drawing out the vowel long and confused. “Okay,” he repeats, terse.  
  
“I just… I found something. Something that might help get you out of here. I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to see you about it.”  
  
Roxas looks at him, quirking a smile in his direction. “Pretty stupid of you to just walk in like that.”  
  
Axel laughs. It isn’t a happy sound. “Trust me, I know. Sorry about that.”  
  
The minutes pass in silence and it’s starting to get awkward again when Roxas sighs loudly and sits up. There’s an oddly determined look in his eyes that Axel doesn’t get the chance to ask about before Roxas is sliding into his lap, smooth as silk. “Well, since you’re here already, how about you distract me before my next customer?”  
  
Axel stares at him as Roxas grinds down, shifting his hips in a practised movement. Already he can feel his body responding, his dick twitching against the kid’s ass. Apparently Roxas can feel it, because he smirks, leaning down—  
  
It’s a good kiss. Wet, smooth, just the right amount of teeth to make his dick stiffen hopefully. A bit sudden, but good. It’s been a while, probably since him and Larxene were a thing.  
  
He’s just getting into it, kissing down Roxas’ throat and actually responding enthusiastically when pain flares up in his abdomen, making him gasp and grab for his stomach. Roxas makes an affronted noise, but Axel gasps again, wincing when the pain spreads through his limbs—burning its way up his throat. He crumples over, knocking Roxas from his lap—  
  
And just like that, the pain is gone.  
  
He stares down at his body, confused, and then at Roxas, who is glaring at him. The silky fabric over his crotch is tented tellingly, and Axel clears his throat, reaching over to cradle the curve of the kid’s jaw. No pain. Gently, he trails that hand downwards, parting the robe as he goes until it’s gaping open across Roxas’ chest. Roxas makes a breathy little sound when Axel reaches his stomach, whining and shivering a little when he carefully trails his nails through the coarse blonde curls framing Roxas’ dick. Axel takes a deep breath, slanting Roxas a questioning glance—a ‘can I?’ sort of look that has the human nodding frantically.  
  
Gently, he wraps a hand around the kid’s dick, marvelling at the weight of it in his palm and the way Roxas’ back arches, the way he gasps. He’s just starting to think that the pain was an ill-timed cramp when it starts up again, worse than before, making him gasp and jerk back from Roxas’ dick as if it burned him.  
  
He stares at it, his eyes wide, and says, “Are you fucking kidding me.”  
  
Roxas is glaring at him again, he’s pretty sure, his dick twitching as Axel stares at it. “What? Jesus, come back over here.”  
  
Impatient, Roxas moves as if to slide back over to him, like he’s going to climb right back into Axel’s lap. While one part of him—a very particular part—wants that very much, Axel sucks in a breath and scrambles away. Roxas stares at him, incredulous. “What the fuck, dude?”  
  
“That fucking asshole,” Axel breathes. His own dick is still straining against the fabric of his pants, uncomfortably hard. He wants to scream. “I’m going to kill him.”  
  
“Want to tell me what’s going on? You’re acting like a crazy person.”  
  
Axel sighs, biting down on his tongue to keep him from snarling. “My _esteemed_ employer clearly suspects that I’m the one who let you into the bathhouse considering the fact that he found it necessary to _curse_ my fucking dick.”  
  
He bites back a few more choice curses as Roxas stares at him, disbelieving. “He can do that?”  
  
“There isn’t a lot he can’t do, Roxas,” he says. He wants to rage and snarl, wants to rip out Ansem’s entrails and eat them for breakfast. Wants to roast him on a fucking spike for all the world to see.  
  
There’s silence once more as Axel looks at anything but Roxas. There’s a small vanity in one corner of the room, scented oils and various powders that look like Larxene’s. The room is lit very faintly by red lanterns hanging from the ceilings. He snorts. Very cute, nice touch.  
  
There’s the sound of skin on silk and when he looks back, Roxas has a hand on his own dick, the robe on the floor by his feet. “We could always just… watch each other?” he suggests hopefully, his face red.  
  
Axel swallows, watching the head of Roxas’ dick disappear into the curve of Roxas’ hand, then reappear, flushed and slick. Fuck, he wants to touch—doesn’t think that he can watch Roxas do this without touching him.  
  
Fuck, he’s not going to be able to do it.  
  
Something must show on his face, because disappointment flickers across Roxas’. He recovers a moment later and shrugs, the hand on his dick speeding up. “Fair enough,” he says. “But you should probably get out of here then, because I’m not stopping.”  
  
Axel’s quick to scramble for the door, sparing one last look at Roxas biting down on his lip, flush across his cheeks as he watches Axel go with hooded eyes, before he makes himself leave. He gets to his own quarters in record time, stuffing his hand down his pants and jerking himself fast and hard, biting down on his knuckles to keep himself quiet.  
  
It’s not until he’s come all over his hands that he realizes he never got the chance to tell Roxas about the hut in Swamp Bottom.  
  
He tries to resist the urge to bang his head against the wall.  
  
He doesn’t succeed.  
  
.  
  
“Why the long face, little dude?”  
  
Roxas sighs, shuffling along after Demyx and the rest of the bathhouse workers. He flips his name token over so it’s on the red side. “It’s nothing,” he mutters quietly. Demyx gives him a look. “Fine, okay. It’s not nothing, but I don’t wanna talk about it.”  
  
Demyx shrugs, flipping his token over as well. It’s raining outside, like it has been for the last couple days, and the sound of the rain hitting the roof is making him sleepy. They part ways, Roxas following some of the younger workers to scrub the floors while Demyx trails after some of the other ladies.  
  
It doesn’t take long to scrub the floors. The workers tend to have things down to a science here, efficient and quick. He’s wringing out a rag when Demyx finds him again, leaning down to touch a bruise on the curve of Roxas’ jaw. Frustrated, Roxas bats his hand away.  
  
“That what got you down? Rough customers? You know Larxene will beat ‘em up for you if you ask her nicely. She likes you.”  
  
He’d gotten the bruise from the customer who’d shown up an hour or so after Axel had left—a smiling man with paper white hair and frost crusted to his skin. He’d been rough, sure, but Roxas had been irritable. He’s the one who’d set the pace.  
  
“That’s not it,” he shrugs, hefting the bucket to his hip. His mouth is half open, about to just break down and just tell him when the Foreman saunters up, a notebook and pen in his hands.  
  
“Demyx and Sai, you get the big tub today,” he says, smirking at them. His bushy mustache twitches.  
  
“You have got to be kidding me,” Demyx breathes. “That’s frog work!”  
  
The Foreman shrugs. “Orders from the top. Get to it.”  
  
“Ugh,” Demyx huffs, grimacing as he makes a rude gesture at the man’s back. “Just go dump that shit, I’ll wait for you.”  
  
The rain is coming down hard outside, some of it splashing onto Roxas’ skin when he opens the door to tip the bucket out. He pauses to wipe his brow once its done, staring out into the darkness. He wonders where Axel’s wandered off to. He had said something about shit coming up before Roxas had jumped him. God, he was so stupid.  
  
He thinks about Axel’s hand on him, the hard outline of his dick against Roxas’ ass. Well, at least he hadn’t been wrong about the tension. Dick curses. Who the fuck even curses someone’s dick?  
  
He catches a movement out of the corner of his eye and stares out into the darkness, squinting to see past the rain. He can just barely make out the shape of a shadowed figure.  
  
“Hey,” he calls, cocking his head as whatever it is comes closer. A surge of recognition hits him as he takes in the dark cloak and the hooded pale face. “Aren’t you getting wet out there? I mean, I know the hood probably does a little against the rain, but still. You should be inside.”  
  
He squints some more, just able to make out blue eyes and a feminine nose before Demyx starts shouting for him down the hall. He nudges the bucket back inside with his foot, regarding the hooded figure curiously. He shrugs. “I’ll leave the door open for you, okay? Just shut it once you’re inside.”  
  
He returns to Demyx, ignoring his raised eyebrow in favor of gathering up some supplies—a broom, a couple rags, and the bucket that he fills with clean water.  
  
The big tub is entirely in the very back corner of the bathhouse, because it feels like it takes forever to walk there, other coworkers calling out to them, their voices full of mockery. When they arrive, he takes a moment to just stare.  
  
It’s filthy, coated in some kind of plant matter that might be a type of algae. Or maybe some spirit was shedding when it last visited. The tub itself has what looks like years of dirt on it, and that’s not even the inside.  
  
They start with the floor, pushing all the green shit into one big pile before starting on the tub itself.  
  
“Okay, this isn’t gonna work,” Demyx admits. They’ve been scrubbing for ages and it looks like they haven’t made a dent, the sludge so caked on that it looks like it’s become one with the bath itself. “Go get an herbal soak token from the douche at the desk.”  
  
Roxas sighs. Great, it’s one of those days.  
  
.  
  
He might have made a mistake. Swamp Bottom is miles beneath him, the rain slick on his scales, and he feels sick—like he’s burning inside and out. His vision swims and he can just make out a horde of some kind of creature on his tail.  
  
Yeah, he thinks, his vision blacking out. This was a bad idea.  
  
.  
  
Only problem is that the foreman won’t actually give him a token. “I’m not giving a token to you,” he laughs, handing a handful of tokens to the girl waiting next to him.  
  
“You’re kidding, right?” Roxas says, staring at him, his eyes hard. “That shit isn’t coming off without one, and you know it.”  
  
“Watch your language,” the asshole says, offhand, as he passes a sulphur token to another girl. After another moment, he eyes Roxas again. “Are you seriously still here? Scrub it yourself, unless you’d like to persuade me?”  
  
He’s smirking, and in the past few weeks, Roxas has become very familiar with the look. “I’m not blowing you for a fucking token,” he hisses.  
  
“Well, that’s too bad then. Have fun scrubbing.”  
  
With that, he turns away. Asshole.  
  
Roxas blinks. That’s all he does. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, there’s a girl standing at the foreman’s elbow.  
  
He hasn’t seen her around before, he doesn’t think. She’s got a pale, heart-shaped face, blue eyes, and short dark hair. Her coat is wet.  
  
Her very familiar coat.  
  
She looks at him, raises an eyebrow, and looks down at the tokens. He grins, nodding, and she smiles back. It’s a small thing, barely there, but it’s a smile. The foreman apparently sees him grinning, because he turns, and just like that, she’s gone again. The man gives Roxas a weird look, then turns away again to pick up the phone that’s started going off.  
  
Mistake number one.  
  
It’s weird, watching the token float upwards without anything touching it. It flings itself in his direction and he catches it, grinning as the foreman takes notice, pausing in his conversation to start shouting.  
  
“Thanks,” he chirps at the empty space where the girl was, turning on his heel and jogging away before the frogs end up jumping him or something.  
  
Apparently invisible girl got him a good token, because Demyx spends an entire minute cooing over it before clipping it in and sending it off to Terra. A panel in the wall opens, and Roxas yanks on the rope attached, sighing when the hot water starts streaming out, a wave of heat sweeping over him.  
  
“I’ll go get us some breakfast,” Demyx says, grinning. “Just don’t let that tub overflow.”  
  
Roxas scoffs, letting go of the rope and watching the murky water make its way up the side. “I see how it is. I get to go bargain with the foreman, you get to go to the kitchens.”  
  
The grin on Demyx’s face widens, and he sweeps into a deep, mocking bow. “What can I say? That’s just the way the water flows,” he sings, dancing out of reach before Roxas can smack him.  
  
The water smells pretty gross, but the steam is pretty relaxing, so Roxas carefully takes a seat on the edge of the tub, dipping his toes into it. He sighs with pleasure, wiggling them as he lets his eyes slide closed. It’s quiet, the faint sounds of other workers down the hall added to the constant stream of water; peaceful.  
  
When he opens his eyes again, the girl from before is sitting next to him, a bucket full of tokens in her lap.  
  
“Well, hey there,” he says with an easy grin. “If it isn’t my favorite disappearing girl.”  
  
She smiles hesitantly, lifting a token out of the bucket and offering it to him. He laughs and fights back the urge to hug her. What a weird spirit. “It’s okay, I don’t need anymore. Thanks though.”  
  
Her expression goes confused and she offers it to him again, her smile crooked.  
  
“Naw, I really don’t need it,” he shrugs. “If you wanna have a bath though, gimme a minute to let this finish and I’ll get out of your way.”  
  
She stares at him, and for the first time, looks faintly… hurt.  
  
And then she disappears.  
  
The bucket plunks down into the water, tipping a few tokens overboard where they settle at the bottom of the tub. The water is dangerously high, so he reaches up to yank on the rope, staring at the floating bucket.  
  
What a weird girl.  
  
.  
  
Pain. Pain, so much pain.  
  
Lightning flashes and he doesn’t know where he is, but there’s a weak cloaking spell on him, so he must be running from something.  
  
He coughs something black onto the tree roots beside him, his form flickering between his humanoid guise and the two tonne dragon that he is most of the time. Quiet as he can, he hunkers down beneath the tree and waits.  
  
.  
  
The shouting is the first sign that something’s wrong. When he pokes his head out, one of the frogs flag him down.  
  
“The Superior wants to see you,” he says and Roxas nods, confused, and follows him down the hall.  
  
Ansem’s pacing in the lobby, the tail end of his coat flaring out behind him. Saix, fully dressed this time, flanks one side, Xigbar the other. When his eyes light on Roxas he smiles, syrupy smooth in a way that does nothing to mask the panic in his eyes.  
  
“How are you doing, Sai? Larxene tells me you’re taking well to your new position,” he purrs, grinning.  
  
Roxas fights back the urge to glare at him, and plasters a modest expression across his face, offering a small bow. “I am,” he says, quietly. “Thank you for the opportunity.”  
  
“And the water sprite, he says that you’re doing well here as well.”  
  
“Yes sir,” he says, placid and smiling. Ansem looks annoyed.  
  
“Well, this is your big chance, so don’t screw it up. We have a customer coming.”  
  
For a moment, Roxas thinks that he’s talking about a different type of customer and his face goes white before he registers the next bit to come out of Xehanort’s mouth, the part about taking the customer to the big tub. Surely he wouldn’t be expected to fuck someone in the tubs.  
  
He must look confused, because Ansem chuckles and pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, that’s not what I mean by taking care of—just make sure he’s cared for, that he has a nice soak, understand?”  
  
“Yes sir.”  
  
Someone gasps, hissing something that sounds suspiciously like ‘it’s here,’ before disappearing down the hall.  
  
The smell hits Roxas like a bag of bricks to the face, like burning shit and rotting corpses. He gags, not even noticing when Ansem and the others go still beside him.  
  
“You’ll insult our guest,” Ansem hisses, slapping Roxas’ hands down when they instinctively go for his nose.  
  
The creature is… well, it looks like a giant blob of festering shit, trailing purple toxic sludge behind it like a particularly disgusting trail of breadcrumbs. Strangely, the sight of it makes Roxas feel inexplicably sad, the way that out of control garbage dumps or trash in the sea taxes a person’s heart. He breathes out through his nose, and very carefully, deliberately, takes his next breath in through his mouth.  
  
It’s not much better. He knows it’s just his mind messing with him, but he can almost taste it—the rancid bite of rotten meat tempting his gag reflex.  
  
Ansem is talking to the spirit at his side, his own face set in a rigid mask, his eyes the only thing still giving away his anxiety. He nudges Roxas between the ribs, growling something, and when Roxas blinks he notices the outstretched appendage between him and the creature.  
  
The feel of the gold hitting his palms, the sludge that comes with it sending a disgusted shiver down his spine, makes him gulp and fight down the urge to throw the money back where it came from. The substance burns and he hisses, quiet enough that Ansem doesn’t notice.  
  
“Don’t make him wait, take him to the baths,” Ansem snaps, uncharacteristically ruffled.  
  
He bows to the customer, his movements stilted and awkward as he turns to lead the spirit down the hallway, overly conscious of the workers gagging and dashing away from him. There’s shouting, he realizes dimly. Demyx, he thinks, shouting his not-name, and Ansem saying something about opening the windows. Yes, please, open the windows.  
  
It was a long walk to the big tub before, when it was just him and Demyx getting teased by their coworkers. Now it takes an eternity, Roxas’ own feet dragging as the spirit drags itself after him, ever so slowly. The steam on his face, when he makes it to the room is like a breath of fresh air, and he takes a quick gulp of that steam—the scent of dried worm salt, which he had found so gross before now smells like the gardens had the sunniest day that Axel had taken him out there.  
  
The worst part of the creature crawling into the bath and subsequently flooding the place is the way that the water congeals around his thighs, going warm and slimy, like toxic mud. The second worst thing is how sad it looks afterwards, examining its limbs like he’s not used to them looking so disgusting.  
  
It makes a bleating noise in his direction, helpless, and Roxas remembers the bath tokens.  
  
The bucket is sitting where he left it, and it takes a minute to get the token clipped on, but when he does, the panel comes free of the wall with no trouble. Now he just has to get to the rope.  
  
Up close, the thing smells even worse, its breath so terrible that it nearly knocks Roxas flat.  
  
And then Roxas closes his hand around the rope, giving it a sharp tug.  
  
Thank god for fresh water, he thinks, just before he falls into the tub.  
  
The spirit lifts him out, which he’s happy about. It would really suck to drown in sewage. He’s big enough that when it cradles him in its hands, he just barely manages to not fall off. It bleats at him again, holding him close, and in the haze of the moment, he feels something poke up against his hand.  
  
It’s truly horrifying that his first thought is that he really hopes the object pushing insistently against his fingers isn’t a dick, because he really couldn’t handle that. But something feels off about it, and he gropes for it, confused to realize that whatever the thing is, it’s wood.  
  
Demyx enters the room at some point, and he spares his friend a glance, preoccupied with sussing out what the hell is wrong with this stink spirit. He’s pretty damn sure that Demyx starts spouting some bullshit about not letting him get hurt, holding a broom in hand like it’s a sword, but he’s not sure, because he finally realizes what he’s touching.  
‘  
A bicycle handle. He’s touching part of a bicycle.  
  
He blinks, slowly, as if surfacing from a dream, his hair dripping in his eyes as he breathes, “He needs help, there’s something in his side. Help me yank this thing out.”  
  
Ansem’s appearance is a surprise, mostly because he appears out of nowhere, insisting that everyone help Roxas pull.  
  
And that’s how Roxas ends up on one side of a tug of war, the rest of the bathhouse workers heaving on the rope stretched taut behind him. The amount of garbage that pours out is frankly appalling, bursting outwards and pushing everyone else out of the room until it’s just Roxas, yanking on one end of a fishing line.  
  
It comes free with a little pop, the rest of the gunk draining with ease, and the water that suddenly envelops his body is just as much of a shock as falling in had been earlier. It’s warm water, nice, no more sludge, but he’s still completely encased in it, unable to breathe.  
  
There’s a man standing in front of him, features only slightly visible in the mist. He’s got bushy eyebrows, a long grey beard, and the most irritated pair of eyes that Roxas has ever seen. “Well done, child,” he tells Roxas, wringing water out of his beard. “If my idiot apprentice had your quick thinking skills, he wouldn’t have flooded the river that feeds my magic with all this garbage.”  
  
The old man scoffs. “Lazy mouse. Don’t suppose you’re looking for a job?” he asks, as hopeful as a man with eyebrows that angry can seem. Slowly, Roxas shakes his head.  
  
The man sighs. “Pity.”  
  
The water doesn’t so much let him go as it does drift away, cascading down his body until he’s standing on the edge of the tub, gazing at it and wondering where the angry wizard went and what the hell he’s left in Roxas’ hands.  
  
There’s a great deal of shouting behind him, but he only has eyes for the serpentine creature that bursts out of the pool. It still has the angry eyebrows and the bushy beard, he thinks, watching as it makes a rather dramatic exit.  
  
He blinks and Ansem pats him on the back, saying something about gold. The foreman grins at him, fat lips stretching wide across his face. Demyx bounces around in front of him, cheering his name (not his name, not ever, can’t forget) and crooning about what great songs he’ll write about this day. Patrons and coworkers alike are cheering, and reality is strangely hazy, like there’s a film over everything.  
  
He glances around for Axel, almost frantic, because if everyone else is here, shouldn’t Axel be as well?  
  
But Axel isn’t there.  
  
His invisible little girl is though, standing in a corner away from everyone else, watching the scene unfold with blank eyes. As he watches her, she blinks, shifting until her eyes meet his. She flickers all over like static, the image shivering like a television in a thunderstorm, and smiles at him as she blinks out of sight.  
  
A shiver runs down his spine, and with a gut-churning wrench, the world around him is in surround sound once more, Ansem shouting something about sake being on the house, all thanks to him, which means that three hours later, when he’s stumbling after Larxene into her room, he’s more than a little tipsy.  
  
She gives him a slanty eyed look as she collapses into her bed, yawning hugely and patting the spot next to her. He trips across the room and doesn’t so much sit as fall down next to her. She blows a raspberry against his belly for his trouble.  
  
“So,” she says into the silence. “Axel.”  
  
He blinks at her, confused. “What about him?” he asks.  
  
She rolls her eyes, shoving him so hard that he nearly topples backwards off the bed. “You like him, you idiot. I saw the surly motherfucker haunting these halls the other day, so now you gotta nut up or shut up. Did you guys fuck?”  
  
It’s dark in her room, dim blue lanterns casting flickering shadows across the wall, making her teeth shine blue as she grins. He flushes, his face going even hotter, and the sake burns in his stomach.  
  
“That’s definitely none of your business,” he stammers, and this time, when she punches him in the shoulder, he does crumple into her sheets. He stays there, staring blearily at the ceiling.  
  
“What is it with you and violence?” he whines. She laughs.  
  
“It’s tough love, kid. Now seriously, I’m the one who taught you how to have a pretty orgasm, I deserve to know if my teachings have borne fruit or not. So spill.”  
  
The shadows on the ceiling almost look like shapes if he squints. The one directly above him looks kind of like a dragon. Imagine that. He scowls at it, rolling the ball of whatever the hell the sorcerer gave him in his apron pocket. Clumsily, he shrugs, his shoulder brushing up against her knee.  
  
“We tried to,” he admits, biting his lip when she makes an inquisitive noise. “It didn’t work. Apparently it’s a thing here to curse someone’s dick.”  
  
She’s staring at him, he can tell. “What?”  
  
“No idea. Guess Ansem suspects something, but when the dick touching happened, he kind of crumpled up in pain. So either Ansem is a massive cockblock or Axel feels the need to make up incredibly ridiculous excuses when he doesn’t want to fuck somebody.”  
  
He shrugs again, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s not a big deal or anything,” he says.  
  
“Please tell me you’re kidding. Why would—” She cuts herself off, sucking in a deep breath. “Oh my god. He’s the one who snuck you in here. All this time, I thought you made it down to Terra by yourself—that when he saw you, he did you a favor because you look like his little wind spirit. But that’s not it, is it?”  
  
Roxas chews on his lip, suddenly very aware of the way the room is spinning faintly and the nausea is starting to brew in his gut. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Axel got me in.”  
  
“And… what?”  
  
He’s sick of shrugging, so he just hums low in his throat, eyelids flickering. God, he’s so tired. “He was nice to me. Fed me a magic berry so I wouldn’t disappear, told me how to find Terra. There were picnics and stuff, it was pretty awesome.”  
  
He finally lets his eyes shift to where she’s still staring at him, her elbows propping her up against the sheets. Her outline is mostly in shadow, but her eyes are very green suddenly, wide with shock. “You fell in love with him,” she says softly, and when he doesn’t respond, nudges his elbow with hers. “Right?”  
  
The minutes tick by in silence and Roxas lets them pass, rubbing his fingers against the coolness of the silken sheets. It’s weird, he thinks. The beds. Everything else about this place is very old, very feudal Japan, but the beds are almost like something you’d find in a fancy hotel. Maybe Ansem just thinks that classy whores need 21st century sheets. “It’s stupid, I know. Demyx told me about him, about what he does. I know it’s dumb, but I—”  
  
 _Can’t help it_ , he thinks, memories of pink petals and the blue sky above him projected against the backs of his eyelids. It occurs to him that he doesn’t really know how long he’s been here. He can’t quite recall the human world, all the days blurring together in one endless stream of images. It can’t have been that long. It’s only been a few weeks. A month, maybe two. But then he thinks of memorizing the languages in Zexion and Lexaeus’s books, of how he can’t quite recall just how many of them he’s gone through. A thin tendril of fear curls it’s way around his neck and squeezes, making him choke. God, he’s so dumb.  
  
“Shh,” Larxene whispers, scooting closer so she can wrap her arms around him. He wonders if this is going to end in sex, as so many things involving her tend to do. She thinks she’s got a heart of ice, that she’s broken and unbreakable at the same time, but he knows her, and he doesn’t know when that happened—when she became his friend. “It’s okay,” she says, rubbing circles against his back.  
  
She’s not a comforting kind of person. She prefers violence as affection and affection as violence, so he knows that she’s probably a little more drunk than he thought if she’s letting him see this side of her. Or maybe she thinks of him as a friend too.  
  
“I’m so stupid,” he says, vision blurring as he fights to keep the tears from falling.  
  
“No, you aren’t. He’s… Axel’s a good guy. Not many people know him the way I do, and I want you to know that the rumors you hear? They’re not all true.” She looks at him in the darkness, eyes searching. For what, he doesn’t know. “He’s the Superior’s henchman, yeah, but he hates doing it. He hates putting up this stupid hardass facade when he’s such a softie deep down. Trust me, I could chew him up and spit him right back out, sweetheart. Axel’s heart is like cookie dough.”  
  
He snorts a laugh into her clavicle, horrified when snot smears on her skin. She doesn’t even react, still staring at him, unblinkingly. He thinks of something to say, but all that’s coming to mind is a too tentative _are you sure_ that would probably get him an elbow to the knee. So he sighs, and breathes “okay” into the quiet, not really sure what it means.  
  
Whatever it does mean, Larxene seems to accept it, giving him a soft, almost affectionate look before ruffling his hair and pulling him back to the pillows with her. Apparently not all things come back to sex when she’s involved, because all she does is slip off her robe, unashamed of her own nakedness, and loops a tired arm around his waist.  
  
“Dude, I’m not sleeping in my apron,” he tells her a moment later. She does sock him in the shoulder again, but she lets him up long enough to slip his clothes off before pulling him back down to the pillows. When he scoots closer, she makes a content noise, and the next thing he knows, her breathing has evened out into soft little puffs against the back of his neck.  
  
“My name is Roxas,” he whispers into the dark, not sure who he’s telling.  
  
Sleep finds him not long after.  
  
.  
  
She is not a she. She doesn’t really know what she is. Before the man with the golden eyes, she remembers nothing—just one long empty expanse of gray space where memories should be found.  
  
She remembers the man and his cold eyes, remembers, _You’re a nobody. Nobodies aren’t welcome in my bathhouse._  
  
She remembers being outside. The cool water against her ankles as she walked the tracks. The glimmer of the first lantern being lit. The weight of a chrysanthemum in her palm. She remembers that first parade of spirits and how no one had seen her. How could they? She was nobody. She wasn’t a she at all, she was barely an it.  
  
She had watched the bathhouse, basking in the warmth of its colors, the life leeching from the windows and the doors. The warm scent of tea and savory spices.  
  
She’s hungry and parched, but she doesn’t have a memory of food or water, so she subsides on nothing.  
  
It could be days or weeks, or maybe even hours, but she remembers the first time she’d seen the glow of her golden boy, sheltered in the dragon’s arms. She remembers him walking past her and how both of their eyes had flicked to hers, quick as a bird of prey and gone just as fast. She remembers his glow, whether it was his humanity or his soul. She remembers its warmth.  
  
Long, endless days had passed before she had seen him again and when she had, he’d invited her out of the rain. She’d stolen the strange token for him straight from under the bad man’s nose and then, when they were both gone and the desk was empty, she’d stolen more.  
  
He’d offered her a bath, but refused her gifts, and she’d let the air swallow her atoms back up, becoming nothing once more.  
  
She watched him deal with the unfortunate magician and drink sake with the others, and then she’d watched him stagger back to the elevator with the blonde woman who smelt of rodents and lightning, like the ozone clinging to the backs of her teeth.  
  
Now she’s alone again, lingering in the residual warmth of the baths at night. She sits on the edge of the bath, as she had with him, and stares into it, wishing for the water once more—the heat.  
  
There’s a soft noise behind her, but when she turns, no one is there.  
  
“You don’t belong here,” a voice sing-songs in the darkness, and when she whips back around, there’s a boy standing in the basin of the tub. His hair is dark and his eyes golden, shadows clinging to his body like silken cobwebs. He smiles at her, his lips too red against his pale flesh, like a slash of blood.  
  
She doesn’t speak. No one ever taught her how.  
  
“Cat got your tongue?”  
  
The smile widens to a grin and the sight of it makes her skin crawl. He feels cold, like shadows and rain and loneliness; she doesn’t like it.  
  
 _What do you want_? she thinks, and to her surprise, he answers.  
  
“What I want, little puppet, is to be a real boy again. Tell me, are you hungry?  
  
.  
  
Roxas dreams of the upturned corner of a smile—of red hair and a laugh. The shade of red is off, not like Axel’s—but darker. There’s a voice there, whispering things that never reach his ears. He dreams of his brother and Riku in the front seat, and of himself huddled in the back, leaning against _someone_ —  
  
He wakes up in a cold sweat to an empty room, Larxene’s spot still warm next to him. There’s powder spilled across her vanity, like she’d left in a hurry, so he sits up, blinking in the afternoon light and smacking his lips. He grimaces. His mouth tastes horrible.  
  
The hallways are deserted. It’s still early enough in the day that most wouldn’t be awake for their shifts for another hour or so, but every room he pokes his head into is empty, even the one he usually shares with Demyx and the others. It’s only when he makes it down to the lower levels that he realizes where everyone is.  
  
They’re all awake, a crowd of workers rushing to and fro, shouting orders to one another.  
  
“There you are!”  
  
It’s Demyx, hopping up the staircase and grinning a shark’s vicious smile, all teeth. He thrusts something into Roxas’ face, the movement so quick that Roxas flinches back a step. When he blinks his eyes open, there’s a nugget of gold glittering back at him.  
  
“I’d wondered where you’d gotten to last night, but now I don’t have to ask. That’s one of Larxene’s robes, isn’t it?”  
  
Roxas blinks down at himself. His own clothes had been dirty, so it had seemed easier to grab one of Larxene’s shorter kimonos and grab the gift from the sorcerer, stuffing his own dirty work clothes in with her laundry. It’s probably the plainest one she has, simple and pale blue, just the one layer, but it’s soft. He shrugs, rolling his eyes when Demyx leers at him. “It wasn’t like that, I just crashed in her room,” he says, breaking off to yawn hugely. “Where is she anyway?”  
  
“Oh! That’s what I wanted to tell you! I was coming to find you anyway. There’s a guest giving away gold by the handful. She’s so little, but she’s eating the entire kitchen. It’s insane.”  
  
He blinks at Demyx, who is practically vibrating with excitement. There’s a smear of flour across one of his cheeks. “Who’s the guest?” he asks.  
  
Demyx shrugs, the movement jerky, and grabs him by the wrist. “Don’t know, don’t care. She’s loaded though, come on.”  
  
He pulls back, remembering his talk with Larxene last night. He hasn’t seen Axel in days, not since he’d gone off to seek out whatever lead he’d found—the mysterious thing that could help get Roxas home. The worry that’s been lurking in the back of his mind surfaces, reaching itchy tendrils into his chest and tugging on his heartstrings.  
  
“I think I’m gonna go find Axel, actually,” he says, watching the excitement on Demyx’s face turn to incredulity.  
  
“Seriously? You’re gonna pass up gold for that asshole?” Some of the other workers sprint up to him at that moment, laughing. “Oh whatever, go find your boyfriend, Sai,” he shouts, letting himself get tugged off after the others.  
  
The staircase is quiet in the face of the noise coming from downstairs—the yelling of the workers and the sizzle from the kitchens. It smells like cooked meat and exotic spices, making his stomach rumble in hunger.  
  
He shakes his head, turning away and heading back the way he came.  
  
The tide is high today, enough that it looks like the ocean—an endless stretch of gleaming blue. He stares out at the cliff face that houses the swine pen and sighs. “Where are you, Axel?” he whispers, pillowing his cheek on the wooden railing.  
  
The bird’s are vocal today, the wind caressing his face. It smells like the sea, too. He’s lazily watching the clouds move across the sky when he catches movement closer to the water’s edge out of the corner of his eye. He’s slow to turn, still sleepy and a little hungover, and he blinks at the thing in the distance, straining his eyes.  
  
At first, he’s not really sure what he’s looking at. He doesn’t realize until he catches sight of gleaming red and black scales, fur a shade or two darker than the body, a serpentine form twisting in a flock of white specks. From this far away the white specks look like birds. He stares, confused, until he realizes that not all of the red is from the shine of the dragon’s scales, the injuries blending with it’s natural coloring. He gasps, spine going ramrod straight.  
  
He yells, shouting as loud as he can just as Axel hits the water. His heart feels like it’s in his throat, his pulse hammering in his veins.  
  
“Axel!” Roxas shouts again when the serpentine form manages to free itself from the waves, steam rising from Axel’s back as he rolls this way and that, his form glistening like a mirage. He charges toward Roxas, still writhing, and Roxas has just enough foresight to step back before he gets flattened.  
  
The sound of Axel crashing through the door behind him is loud, too loud when Ansem is sleeping just ten floors above them. Roxas panics when the things dart towards him, reaching out to slide the screens shut before the creatures can get inside.  
  
It’s paper—just paper, and he blinks, confused, as they blanket the screens, the few that manage to get inside ripping apart with a brush of his hand. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into,” he hisses, finally managing to slide the screen completely shut just as the paper figures on the other side start to drift back to sea.  
  
There’s blood everywhere when he turns to inspect the damage that Axel’s done to their room. Blankets and pillows are askew on the floor, feathers drifting lazily in the air from where Axel had torn the pillows with his claws. Axel himself looks terrible, and even as a frission of fear skips across his ribcage at the sight of deadly claws and fangs longer than his hand, Roxas starts towards him, desperate to help.  
  
“You’ll be okay,” he whispers, and Axel makes a weird, rattling hiss that makes his hair stand on end. His hands shake as he reaches out, only to flinch back when Axel tears past him, out through the screen.  
  
Roxas gasps, darting forward and leaning too far out over the railing to really be safe, watching as Axel utterly fails at flying—crashing into the walls a few times before making it in through the top window, Ansem’s floor.  
  
He curses and doesn’t realize that he’s got blood all over his hands until he’s tearing away down corridors and up steep staircases.  
  
Apparently everyone has relocated from the bottommost floors, because he only gets up two or three before he runs straight into a wall of shouting, singing people, making for the elevator when he squeezes free.  
  
The elevator appears to be occupied by one of the asshole frogs, so Roxas pivots on his heel and changes directions, blood thrumming through his veins. All he can think of is Axel bleeding everywhere, that gaping mouth drooling blood, green eyes feral and unfamiliar.  
  
He’s so caught up in his panic that he doesn’t even recognize his little invisible girl at the center of the spectacle until he nearly runs into her, the foreman reaching out to smack him to the ground before he can knock her off balance.  
  
He blinks at her from the ground, dazed. She’s… fuzzy around the edges, a porcelain mask pulled down to cover her heart-shaped face, but he recognizes her anyway. He inclines his head a bit, feeling guilty suddenly for the way he’d turned away her tokens when they’d helped him so much in the end. “Thanks for before,” he says, smiling sheepishly as the foreman gets into his face, shouting about stinking, stupid humans.  
  
He blinks, and she just tosses the foreman aside, like it’s that easy—kneeling down in front of Roxas.  
  
He can’t see her eyes like this. The eyeholes of the mask are blackened and dead, like nothing’s behind them. She cups her hands between them, and he thinks she might be smiling behind that eerie mask. As he watches, her palms fill with gold, until there’s a towering pile sitting there. He stares at it as it glimmers, looking back at her. She makes a tiny little sound, like she’s urging him to take it. He blinks, confused, before shaking his head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, bowing deeply. “But I can’t take any of that. My friend is hurt and I need to get to him before it’s too late.”  
  
His pulse skips again, fear making his brain go hazy and gets back to his feet, taking off down the hallway just as everyone swarms for the gold that his little invisible girl is dropping, her hands trembling. Fuck, he’s such an asshole. He should have at least taken one or something, just to be polite. Now he’s refused her twice.  
  
He doesn’t hear it when the screaming starts.  
  
Scaling the bathhouse isn’t really something he wants to do, but there’s a ladder near the window on this floor, he remembers, and yup, there it is. Just as daunting as it was the last time he saw it, before he was facing it across a pipe that probably won’t support his weight.  
  
It doesn’t, but he somehow manages to make it across, heart in his throat as he tries not to look down.  
  
If he’d thought the wind was bad by Terra’s staircase, it’s nothing like climbing a ladder four flights while hundreds of feet in the air. It makes him feel sick, his hands clammy enough that he’s afraid they’ll slip on the ladder.  
  
He keeps climbing.  
  
The window at the top of the ladder is locked and apparently sturdy enough that ramming it does nothing for a full minute before it inexplicably gives, making him tumble over backwards into a hallway with marble floors and gaudy, old looking paintings.  
  
The hallway leads to a white room—so bright that it makes him wince—walls, ceilings, even the furniture. The only thing with any color at all are the pictures taped to the walls and the girl sitting in the center of the room, staring at an empty birdcage.  
  
He must be heaving for breath still, because within seconds she’s turned to face him, blue eyes going wide.  
  
 _You’ve woken my witch_ , he remembers Ansem saying just after that awful wailing had started up. He stares at her, both of them blinking at each other before he’s distracted by a voice just outside of the room—Ansem, snarling at someone. He can just make out some of the words—nobodies and something about letting a her in. He lets out a shuddering breath and hopes that his not-so-invisible girl from before is okay.  
  
He tiptoes past the girl, shooting her a fearful glance that she returns with that same placid stare, reaching the curtain just as Ansem slams his phone down. “Plebeians,” he snarls, snapping his fingers. Roxas bites his lip when the strange shadow-y creature appears, its eyes glowing bright, face a horrible twisted grimace. “Get Axel out of here, no use having a corpse in my office when I return. Saix, with me.”  
  
Then, a horrible thing happens. Ansem starts heading his way.  
  
He panics, dashing back into the room and looking frantically for a place to hide. Desperate, he looks to the girl, who calmly points to a mound of white pillows in the corner.  
  
He makes it just as Ansem brushes the curtain aside.  
  
For a moment, he’s horrified that Ansem might have caught a flash of his feet before he made it in, the cushions muffling the click of Ansem’s shoes.  
  
“I have something to attend to,” he hears. “As per usual, my guardian will be watching. So don’t get any ideas about escaping.”  
  
If the girl speaks, it’s much too softly to be heard, because the next thing he knows Ansem’s departing as quickly as he came.  
  
“It’s safe now,” the girl says, her voice echoing faintly. “He’s gone.”  
  
Roxas is still cautious as he eases out of the cushions, giving the girl a wary look. “Thanks for covering for me,” he mutters, taking the girl in for the first time.  
  
She’s tiny—almost emaciated, her fragile bones visible against paper-thin skin. Everything about her is pale—the blonde hair tumbling just past her shoulders, the blue eyes peering curiously up at him, skin so light that he can see the blue of her veins running up and down her arms. Even her dress is white, nearly hanging to her knobby knees.  
  
“It was no trouble,” she says softly, her eyes not moving from his. “I am not particularly fond of my jailor.”  
  
“He called you a witch, before. That was you crying, wasn’t it? You made all those things explode.”  
  
She smirks a little, and it sits strangely on her lips, like she’s not used to performing the action. “I can do many things. I could take your memories and rearrange them like links on a chain. Make your eardrums shatter. I could make you forget, make you my servant, and you’d never know.”  
  
He stares at her, at her dainty little hands folded atop a sketchbook in her lap, the streaks of red and yellow jarring against the paleness of her frame. He wonders what she’s drawing. “If you can do all that, why not escape?”  
  
A frown flickers across her brow and for a heartbeat, she looks frustrated. “I can’t,” she admits finally. “Something’s missing. Someone who should be here isn’t. I don’t know much more, just that without that person, I cannot leave this bathhouse.”  
  
There’s a sound coming from the other room, like a child whimpering in pain. Axel’s image flickers across his thoughts, and he flinches. _I forgot_ , he thinks, aghast.  
  
“I have to go,” he says suddenly, moving to walk past her. She lets out a little hurt sound, grabbing for his wrist as he passes. Her grip is oddly strong, her fingers like tiny slabs of ice.  
  
“You can’t,” she hisses, eyes wide and panicked.  
  
He stares at her, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “My friend’s hurt,” he says. “I have to help him.”  
  
“Take me with you,” she whispers back, fiercely. “The guardian. I can help you against it. Just don’t leave me, please.”  
  
“You just said you couldn’t leave here though,” he says, confused. Her eyes are wild, desperate, making him wonder just what Ansem’s been having her do. He glances around at all the pictures, of people she could not possibly have seen. A cold weight is amassing in his gut, making him nervous. Realization cuts like glass. “These are all memories, aren’t they? He’s having you take the spirits memories.”  
  
She nods frantically, upsetting her hair. She’s far from calm, but there’s an eerie, quiet sadness in the depths of her eyes. “I remember for them. Their loved ones, their homes, their family. Whatever he makes them forget to keep them coming back, the memories are all here.” She shivers, biting down on her lip. Her eyes fill with tears. “I can’t keep doing this, Roxas,” she says shortly, one tiny sob making its way past her lips.  
  
He goes still, his mind whirring, replaying that last sentence over and over. “What did you call me?”  
  
She stares at him, slowly letting him go. She takes a step back. “Roxas.”  
  
“That’s my name,” he says quietly.  
  
She nods, slow and unsure.  
  
“It’s the name that he took from me. How do you know it? Are you the one who took my name?”  
  
Realization dawns in her eyes as she starts to slowly shake her head. “No,” she whispers. “If I had been the one to take it, you wouldn’t know it now.”  
  
Another sound comes from the room outside and he grits his teeth, annoyed that when he starts forward, she grabs him again. “What?” he hisses, viciously pleased when she flinches away.  
  
“Please,” she breathes, eyes still wet. “You might be the one that I’ve been missing. Just, please.”  
  
“You know if he catches me he’ll steal my heart, don’t you? For stealing his witch. He might eat my brother and Riku—”  
  
She makes a high, startled noise, and for a fraction of a second, her eyes look as if they’re a different shade of blue. “I know, I know. I’ll protect you. Just, please.”  
  
He thinks of birdcages and flight, of what his brother would do if he were in this situation. Sora would take her, he thinks, damning the risk.  
  
“Fine. But you’ve gotta help me get past the guardian.”  
  
A smile lights up her face, making her eyes shine.  
  
Ansem’s creature is dangling Axel by his tail over an odd pit in front of the fireplace when he finally makes his way through the curtains. Roxas gasps at the sight, something snapping in his mind as he rushes forward, leaping at the creature with nothing but his fists.  
  
They fall backwards—thankfully away from the pit—Axel’s body dropping from the creature’s grasp with a dull thud as Roxas lands on top of it. It gives a little snarl, glowing eyes narrowing, hands edged in talons coming up to wrap around his throat. He chokes, hands scrabbling against the things chest.  
  
“Stop,” the girl says from behind him, and the creature freezes. “Now unhand him.”  
  
He doesn’t know what she does, in the end. It’s something unspoken, the air going thick with unseen currents—magic, he thinks, like when Axel performed those cloaking spells. Whatever she does, it works, the creature going limp, it’s claws falling from his throat. The air hits the back of his throat in a rush, making him cough until he’s shuddering. He’s breathing though, which is probably the important part.  
  
Something makes a small, rasping noise beside him and he squints through watery eyes to see Axel nudging his nose up against his knee, making soft noises of pain. “Shh,” he whispers, settling his hand on that soft snout. It’s weird, seeing him like this, just as it had been when he’d crashed into Roxas’ room before. But it’s Axel, something that Roxas knows deep in his heart. He knows it like he knows the sunshine and the sea.  
  
“Axel,” he breathes, soft, his voice brittle with emotion. There are lacerations all over Axel’s serpentine body, blood still dripping from the great gaping maw that is his mouth. When Roxas peers close, Axel’s eyes are glazed over, hazy with the pain.  
  
He’s dying, Roxas thinks.  
  
There are soft footsteps from behind him and he feels the displaced air when the girl crouches beside him.  
  
“This is your friend?” she asks hesitantly as he draws Axel’s head into his lap. He strokes the soft red fur of Axel’s neck, quietly marveling at the texture. It isn’t quite soft, but it’s not coarse either. A bit rough, like silk before it’s been smoothed.  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers. “This is him.”  
  
“My my,” a voice says in his ear, making him wince and draw Axel closer to him. It’s an unfamiliar voice, deep and gravelly. When he turns, one of the paper figures from before is hovering just above his shoulder, spinning quickly away when he tries to bat at it.  
  
The image of a man comes out of it, cloaked in wine red garments from head to foot, the only thing untouched by the color is his face—heavy blonde brows and old, weathered pale skin. His eyes are a golden color that makes him think instantly of Xehanot and Saix. He wonders if the color is popular among spirits, the same way that brown eyes are the most common in the human world. The man shakes his head, as if he’s disappointed. “I wouldn’t have thought that such a horrid thief would have such good friends.”  
  
Roxas frowns. “Axel isn’t a thief.”  
  
The man laughs at him, loud and booming in the quiet of Ansem’s office. “I think you’ll find, dear boy, that your friend is most definitely a thief. Thank you for leading me to him.”  
  
He draws closer and even if he’s mostly see-through, Roxas still cringes away, wondering if he can drag Axel with him. “Who are you?”  
  
“I am Ansem, the _true_ Ansem, previous owner of this establishment. I can see that my apprentice’s rule has not been kind to my home since he stole my home and my name.”  
  
“He stole your name? Why?” Roxas asks when the man is only a few feet away from him.  
  
The man who calls himself Ansem smiles at him, almost kindly, and pats him on the head. Well, tries to. His hand nearly goes through the top of Roxas’ skull. “That’s a story for another time, child. Suffice to say that Xehanort stole many things that day, the least of which being my name. Now hand the dragon over.”  
  
Roxas shakes his head. “Whatever he took, I’ll give it back, but I’m not giving him to you.”  
  
Ansem raises an eyebrow at him. “He stole my golden seal—powerful stuff. There’s hundreds of years of my magic stored in that thing and I have plans for it. You really think he’ll just give it up?”  
  
Roxas bites his lip.  
  
 _I found something. Something that might help get you out of here._  
  
“I think he stole it to get me home,” he whispers quietly. “So yeah, I can get it back.”  
  
The man snorts. “I like your optimism, kid, but I really don’t think that’s going to be good enough. Step aside and I won’t have to hurt you.”  
  
There’s a crashing noise on the other side of the room, impossibly loud in the quiet, and when he looks, the witch girl is on the other side of Ansem’s—or would it be Xehanort’s?—overturned desk. “Get away from them,” she hisses, her expression hard. Like this, she doesn’t look thin and waifish. She looks powerful, some kind of aura hovering around her like an invisible forcefield. “If you don’t, I’ll make such a racket that my Master will come back. You don’t want that, do you?”  
  
Ansem sucks in a startled breath, tsking to himself as he turns towards her.  
  
A low growl is the only warning he gets before Axel comes to life in his arms, rearing his head back and snarling, his tail darting out like a whip and ripping the little paper figure in half. With one last startled curse, the image of Ansem dissolves.  
  
The movement has knocked them off-kilter—sent them back on a crash course for the pit, and he has enough time to hiss Axel’s name before they’re falling, the witch girl’s startled cry following them down.  
  
It’s a very long way to fall.  
  
People always talk about falling in movies and books and how in reality, you’re there, you’re done, splat. Either things don’t work the same in the spirit world or they’re just high enough up, because Roxas has time to crawl up Axel’s body—clinging to that long, powerful neck at first and then—when his hands slip on Axel’s belly scales—moving them to Axel’s long, curved horns.  
  
“Axel,” he hisses, heart pounding. It’s dark, wherever they’ve fallen—a ventilation shaft or a trash chute, he doesn’t know, but he can barely make out Axel’s form in the dark.  
  
They fall into a huge, dimly lit cavern and he has enough time to stare at the black creatures with the golden eyes materializing out of the floor and rising up to meet them before Axel lurches to life beneath him, twisting up and away, leaving the the monsters grasping after them with hooked claws.  
  
The ventilation shaft Axel takes them through is small—small enough that his back scrapes up against the ceiling painfully, shredding Larxene’s kimono as black and red scales are torn from Axel’s body. There’s light materializing at the end of the tunnel though, coming closer and closer, until Axel’s crashing through a wooden fan, flinging Roxas directly on top of Terra, who curses loudly, startled.  
  
Roxas doesn’t think to wonder what he looks like, streaked with blood and bruises, his clothes torn down his back, scales glittering in his hair. He scrambles free of Terra, flinging himself to where Axel has fallen, snarling and writhing on the other side of the room.  
  
“Be careful! Jesus, kid, stay back!” Terra is shouting behind him, and he has to duck an outstretched arm to get to where Axel is finally crumpling to the floor.  
  
Axel growls at him when Roxas reaches out for his muzzle, snarling through blood-stained fangs. Roxas is so panicked—so scared—that he doesn’t give a shit, he just reaches out, cupping that blood-stained maw in the palm of his hand and rubbing their cheeks together.  
  
All the fight goes out of Axel, leaving him to crumple the rest of the way to the floor. Roxas tries to catch him, but he’s too heavy in this form, and he’s forced to drop him gently on the floor. Axel’s legs fold up strangely beneath him; it looks painful.  
  
“That looks pretty serious,” Terra says quietly behind him. Roxas turns, giving Terra a pleading look.  
  
“What can I do? Is he dying?” he asks, rubbing circles into the skin just behind Axel’s jaw. “Don’t give up,” he mutters quietly, just for Axel’s ears. “Please.”  
  
“Internal bleeding,” Terra says. “Do you know if he swallowed something?”  
  
Roxas thinks of Ansem—the real one, anyway—and the way he’d said that Axel had stolen some kind of seal from him—the curse that makes the people who stole it die a slow, painful death.  
  
He blinks, remembering the ball of gunk in his pocket, and is suddenly thankful that he’d remembered to move it to Larxene’s robes earlier instead of just leaving it in her room. What could it be, but medicine? What else would a magician give to Roxas, the human who just wanted to save his friends and get home?  
  
He pulls it out slowly, careful not to startle the dragon in his lap. “I got this gift from that sorcerer, Axel,” he says, biting it in half and showing it to Axel. He shoves the other half back into his robes, praying that Axel will see and know it’s safe. “I think he gave it to me to turn Sora and Riku human again, but it’ll probably heal you okay. Here, eat it.”  
  
When he tries to push it past Axel’s black lips, the dragon growls again, half heartedly. It’s not until he sticks his arm in and pushes the medicine to the back of Axel’s throat that he really starts thrashing. He can’t let Axel spit it out, so he clamps his arms around his head, pressing his brow to the fur between Axel’s horns as Axel struggles beneath him, fighting to free himself.  
  
“It’ll be okay,” he mutters, over and over again until Axel’s throat starts to swell alarmingly under his hands.  
  
The gunk that he spits up is black and steaming, nothing like the medicine Roxas had shoved down his throat. As he watches, the black stuff starts to dissolve, leaving behind a black slug perched atop something gold and glinting.  
  
Terra sucks in a startled breath. “Kill it,” he hisses. “Kill that thing, right now.”  
  
Roxas lets go, nearly tripping over the hem of Larxene’s kimono in his hasty scramble to get to the now panicking creature. When it tries to retreat into the little holes along the far side of the wall, the sootballs block its path, chittering angrily.  
  
In the end, he stomps it into oblivion, the squelch of it between his toes making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.  
  
He looks to Terra, face twisted into a grimace, only to find Terra staring back at him, equal parts amused and horrified. “Bad luck, those things. Here, put your thumbs and forefingers together—just like that, good— _Engacho kitta_.”  
  
With a serious look, he swipes his hand through the shape Roxas’ fingers have made, and nods, like he’s satisfied.  
  
“Axel stole this thing from some guy who said he was the real Ansem,” he says quietly, glaring at the seal like it’s at fault.  
  
Something changes in Terra’s eyes at that, recognition followed by understanding. “Powerful stuff,” he says, nodding. “I wasn’t aware that Ansem was still alive.”  
  
Roxas nods, glancing over to where Axel is slowly changing back, red fur bleeding into unruly red hair, scales giving way to pale skin. “Axel said something about a hut somewhere called Swamp Bottom before, when he was trying to tell me where he was going. He… he said that whatever was there could help get me home.”  
  
Terra’s eyes are shrewd, and in the orange light of the fires, they look almost angry. Roxas blinks and the look is gone, just Terra shooting Axel a weird look, like he hadn’t expected such a thing from a guy like Axel. “He’s not bad, you know?” Roxas protests, annoyed on Axel’s behalf. “He’s helped me all this time and hasn’t asked for anything in return.”  
  
Terra’s quiet, staring off into the flames for a long moment. Finally, he shrugs, the motion made strange by the addition of so many arms. “Maybe you’re right,” he concedes. The look he fixes on Roxas is a familiar one, the same one that Sora would always give Roxas before he thought he was going to do something that would get him in trouble. “But fire spirits are fickle, dragons even more so. It isn’t often that they’re concerned with people other than themselves and Axel… well, Axel’s never given me any reason to believe he’s any different.”  
  
“But—”  
  
Terra tsks at him, bopping him gently on the nose with one of his many hands. “No buts. I’m just trying to tell you to be careful. You might be right. Axel might be the most selfless spirit in this bathhouse, but I’ve seen him take people apart with a snap of his fingers. I’ve seen him orchestrate assassinations with a smile on his face. I’m not saying don’t trust him, because you wouldn’t listen to me anyway, but be wary.”  
  
Roxas scowls at him. “Fine,” he snaps, going to settle himself at Axel’s side—completely human once more. He strokes sweaty hair away from Axel’s temple, rolling him over so he’s not eating the floorboards.  
  
The space between Axel’s brows is wrinkled, his mouth twisted into a grimace of pain as his eyelids flutter fitfully. He has red eyelashes, Roxas notices. He never knew.  
  
There’s a muffled thud behind him and when he turns, Terra’s laid his own futon out on the floor, complete with a blanket and a pillow. With his help, they manage to drag Axel onto it, pulling the blankets up to his chin. They feed him broth and water, ever so gently, and when they’re done, he isn’t shivering quite so badly anymore.  
  
“Ansem said there was a curse on the seal,” Roxas says into the quiet, the only sounds the roar of the fire and the soft sounds of Axel’s breathing. “That Axel would die because of it. I don’t think that the medicine will help much in the long run.”  
  
Terra sighs, a long, drawn-out thing that has Roxas’ bangs fluttering around his jaw. Roxas doesn’t look away from Axel’s sleeping face. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits, wringing his hands in his lap. “Would Ansem lift the curse if I gave him his seal back?”  
  
“Maybe,” Terra says. “It won’t be a guarantee, but it’s his best chance. Swamp Bottom, you said?” When Roxas nods, Terra hums thoughtfully. The set of his face changes then, eyes going determined. “Wait right here.”  
  
He goes off to rummage through a chest of drawers that Roxas hadn’t noticed before, all of his arms yanking drawers open and shutting them again. When he returns, he’s clutching three tickets to his chest and biting his lip.  
  
“These…” he starts, breaking off to shake his head. When he starts again, his voice is immeasurably sad, but steadier. “I’ve been saving these for a very long time. I thought that someday when we were older Aqua and Ven would want to settle down somewhere. Make ourselves a home. All these years I’ve never let go of that hope. But you need them more than we do right now.”  
  
“That’s his name, then? Ven? The wind spirit that I look like.”  
  
Terra looks pained, like he’s getting stabbed in the chest with a rusty dagger. After a moment, he nods. “Ventus, yeah. He was just your average bathhouse worker, but one day, he ended up bringing me lunch. After that, he brought it more and more often, and one day, Aqua was down here too.” He shakes his head. “Falling in love with them was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Neither of them deserve what Master Xehanort did to them.”  
  
“What—” Roxas opens his mouth to ask what Xehanort did, why he did it, but at that moment, the serving door opens and Larxene crawls through, her usually immaculate blonde hair horribly astray.  
  
“There you are,” she hisses, the panic in her eyes swiftly switching to anger. She regards her kimono hanging from Roxas’ frame with horror, taking in the bloodstains and the rips down the back. “What the hell did you do to that thing?”  
  
“It’s been a bad day,” is all he says, suddenly exhausted.  
  
Her eyes soften, and she huffs an annoyed breath, blowing the bangs out of her face. “Well, it’s about to get worse. The doll-faced little girl giving out all the gold turned out to be a monster. She’s eating everyone, and she says you let her in. Ansem’s furious.”  
  
“She’s not a monster,” he says, cocking his head. “She helped me a few times after I invited her out of the rain, and she’s weird but I wouldn’t call her monstrous. Are you sure she’s eating people?”  
  
Larxene looks like she wants to smack him, and for a second he thinks she will. “Yeah, I’m sure,” she hisses, venom in her voice. “One of them was Marluxia.”  
  
Roxas snorts. Marluxia is one of the bathhouse's only male whores who exclusively did it with women. He’s a huge asshole, but for some weird reason Larxene likes him. “He’s probably better off that way,” Roxas quips, mouth drawing down into a grimace. This time Larxene does smack him.  
  
“It’s not funny!” she growls.  
  
She’s right, it’s not funny at all. “Fine, okay. I’ll deal with that before I go.”  
  
He turns to Terra, who gives him a wry look, handing the tickets over when Roxas holds his hands out for them. “Where the hell are you going?” Larxene says, her irritation fading to confusion.  
  
“Swamp Bottom,” he answers, reaching down to where the sootballs are holding his clothes and shoes out for him, unprompted. He changes quickly, buttoning up his jeans and sliding his feet into his shoes as Terra and Larxene exchange somewhat heated words behind him. When he’s done with that, he wraps the kimono around his frame once more. It doesn’t really hide the t-shirt, the gaping rips and tears show black fabric instead of skin, but it’ll do. He looks like a massacre. Maybe Xehanort won’t give him shit if he’s got blood all over his face.  
  
When he turns back, Larxene is scowling and Terra is smirking again. “Sixth stop,” Terra says. “Get it right, the train only runs one way.”  
  
He nods, giving Terra a grateful smile over his shoulder as he comes to a crouch next to Axel’s sleeping form. “I’ll be back soon,” he says, his heart thumping against his ribcage as he bends down over Axel’s face. “So don’t you give up before I can come fix you, you hear?”  
  
The kiss that he brushes against Axel’s lips is dry and chaste, nothing like the last time they’d kissed. It’s a quick thing, a fleeting memory for the road, and he’s pulling back before his tear ducts can threaten to erupt all over his friend.  
  
“Come on,” he says to Larxene, straightening up and swiping his hand against his eyes, just to be safe. When he turns, his eyes are dry and hard. “Take me to her.”  
  
.  
  
The witch girl without a name knows endings. She knows the in-between, memories clinging to her fingertips of folks on holiday, their families and loved ones that they have forgotten sketched across her easel-white walls. She knows how those stories end: the spirits ending up in Ansem’s office with her just a few steps away, waiting for him to point them in her direction, for the taste of cardboard thin images of laughing women and dimpled children, for the blank-eyed look they give her afterwards, and the script she has to follow.  
  
"Welcome to our bathhouse," she says, knowing full well that they’ve already been here for a week, intimately knowing every detail of the obligations they’re surrendering to her. "Enjoy your stay."  
  
She isn’t quite as knowledgeable about beginnings, doesn’t even remember her own, but she does know endings. And she knows exactly how she wants this story to end.  
  
She steps out of the bathhouse and into the sunlight.  
  
.  
  
Axel dreams of endless trees—of a forest that towers around him, a village full of shouting parents and squalling babes, a smile tugging at the edge of a very familiar pair of lips.  
  
 _He looks just like you_ , he thinks, and the tousled blonde hair fades from view.  
  
He dreams of smoke and ash, of flames devouring those towering trees, and the fire that finally puts him to rest.  
  
Later, he’ll rise from the ashes, a phoenix, an akurojin-no-hi, a _dragon_.  
  
Axel sleeps the sleep of the dead; he dreams.  
  
.  
  
The whispering is not quite as quiet as the other workers might like to think. Roxas hears fragments as he passes them in the halls, the colorful murals blurring into melted candlewax. He isn’t walking very fast, but his shoulders are back, his head held high.  
  
“It’s him,” he hears from a girl in a powder blue kimono, pale pink butterflies embroidered into the silk across her shoulders.  
  
“I can’t believe he had the nerve to show his face,” comes from a frog boy in a yellow hakama.  
  
From somewhere to his right, he hears the worst of all. “Ansem’s going to eat his heart in two gulps if No-Face doesn’t get to him first.”  
  
No-Face, he thinks. They’re calling her No-Face now. But that’s not quite right, is it? She’d had a face, heart-shaped and baby smooth like the witch girl’s, blue eyes, and hair the color of the midnight sky. His heart beats slowly in his chest, his pulse steady—he’s calm. He’s calmer than he’s ever been before, with Axel’s life in the palm of his hands.  
  
“Thank goodness,” a frog man gasps when he spots Roxas. “The Superior can’t hold her back much longer.”  
  
As if on cue, a loud crashing noise comes from the door to his right. There’s a mural of a raging oni painted across it, and Roxas stares at it, watching the shadows move. “There’s no need to get upset,” he hears Xehanort saying, voice not his usual silky smooth alto. “They’ll find Sai somewhere.”  
  
The voice that responds is strange, like many voices overlapping, both childlike and booming. “Where is he?” that voice hisses, another crash sounding from behind the screen. “Bring him to me now!”  
  
The frog man nods decisively, a drop of sweat sliding down his temple as he nudges Roxas forward with a hand on his back.  
  
“Master,” he calls. “Sai is here now.”  
  
The door whips open, Xehanort poking his head out. His hair is thoroughly mussed, bits of what look like food and glass stuck to the strands. His eyes are narrowed, furious, and Roxas wonders just why he didn’t get rid of the girl himself. Surely he has power.  
  
As he watches, the man with the stolen name plasters a polite smile to his face. “He’ll be with you in just a moment, girl,” he calls over his shoulder, nudging the door shut behind him. He glares.  
  
“She’s destroying everything,” he hisses, suddenly in Roxas’ face, teeth bared. “It’s costing a fortune! So suck up to her, get us every speck of gold she’s got, and get her out. I don’t care if you ride out of here in her belly, as long as she’s gone.”  
  
He nods, placidly, his eyes utterly blank. Xehanort blinks at him, obviously having expected more of a fight, before snarling and shoving him bodily through the doors.  
  
The room beyond is trashed beyond all recognition, smears of food streaked across the colorful walls, overturned dishes and furniture everywhere. He has to kick a whole lobster aside in order to find a place where he can kneel down. There in the middle of all the chaos is his little invisible girl, her form still flickering like static, mask in place. It’s strange, but as he watches, her body goes through a series of changes—becoming that of one of the little working girls, then that of a frog, then one of the whores who works the room beside Roxas’. Through it all, the mask stays in place, her body switching between others so fast that he can’t spot hers in the parade of strangers. She staggers toward him, her body swaying like she’s drunk, holding a platter of mussels out to him with one hand. “Try this,” she whispers, booming and deep like a full grown man. “It’s delicious,” she whispers, giggling like a child.  
  
The effect is eerie, ice shooting down his spinal column, every instinct insisting that he run. “Do you want some gold?” she asks. “I’m not giving it to anyone else.”  
  
He stares her down, face still a blank mask, and says nothing.  
  
“Come closer,” she wheedles. “What would you like?”  
  
She’s getting closer and closer, until he can smell what she’s become. She smells of rot, corruption. _Yes_ , he thinks. _That’s what I thought_.  
  
“I would like to leave, miss,” he says, all emotion purged from his voice. He’s pleased by how steady it is, his hands still in his lap. “I have somewhere that I need to go. Right away.”  
  
She flinches back, her form flickering between a variety of bodies, too quickly for him to see. He hesitates, then breathes, “I think you should go back to where you came from. It’s not safe for you here now that Xehanort wants you gone. Don’t you have any friends or family you could stay with?”  
  
Her body undulates, and for a moment, he’s looking at her original body again—thin black coat, petite frame, hood drawn up over the porcelain mask. “No,” she whispers. “I have no home to return to.”  
  
She staggers towards him, a hand reaching out to him, and alarm bells start going off in his head. He scrambles backwards, pressing himself against the door. “What is it you want?” he asks, voice starting to shake despite his best efforts.  
  
All is still for a heartbeat, two, and then—  
  
“You,” she whispers. “I want you.”  
  
Her hand stretches, too long to be normal, until its right up against his face. He stares, cross-eyed, as gold blooms into being there. “Take the gold,” she hisses. “Take it now!”  
  
“Are you going to eat me if I do?” he asks, his heart starting up a staccato beat against his ribcage—knocking, like it wants out.  
  
“Take it!” she wails.  
  
Roxas bites his lip, hesitating before he reaches into his pocket. The medicine is falling apart a little, but it’s there. “Here,” he says. “Take this. I was saving the rest for my brother, but I think you need it more than he does.”  
  
He steps forward, heart in his throat, and pulls her mask up with trembling fingers. Beneath it, there’s a shock of blue eyes and brown hair, a face he knows as intimately as his own. “Sora?” he whispers, incredulous, but as he watches, her face shifts into Axel’s, and then Riku’s, and then—  
  
Someone he doesn’t know—red hair, blue eyes so dark they’re almost purple, a heart-shaped face that tugs at his memory, insistent—all people that he wants to see except that last one—  
  
He blinks and her face is her own again for a heartbeat until it turns back into Sora’s, the cycle starting all over again. His hand shakes, and he holds his breath as he pushes the chunk of medicine into her mouth, fingers brushing his brother’s lips. He holds her jaw shut gently as she chews, and slowly, it starts to take longer and longer for her to adopt someone else’s face. When he’s looking at her face once more, he lifts the mask away from her brow and tosses it to the ground.  
  
The clatter makes her jump, and all the resistance that he’s been waiting for starts up at once. She snarls at him, eyes flashing gold,  She retches, bent double as black smoke drools from her lips. Her eyes are still golden, glowing faintly as they narrow hatefully. “What did you do to me?” she hisses, starting forward, her teeth bared. “What did you do?!” she shrieks, and charges.  
  
He runs, nearly bowling Xehanort and several frog men down in his haste, charging down hallways that are blessedly familiar now. He can tell she’s coming after him by the screams he leaves in his wake. “You!” he hears Xehanort shout behind him. When he turns to look, the girl is scrambling around the ruler of the bathhouse, her eyes flashing dangerously when he reaches out as if to touch her. “Hiding behind that mask! I banished you!”  
  
He hears her laugh,  and he almost skids to a stop then and there. It’s his brothers laugh, a few decibels higher and definitely more malicious than he’s ever heard it, but it’s Sora’s. He stumbles, stubbing his toe on the corner of a stair, wondering if she’s eaten him too—if they cooked up his brother and Riku for her, along with all the other pigs in the swine pen.  
  
“You’ll never catch me,” he hears her cackle, almost playful as she gives chase. He picks up speed, rounding a corner so fast that he smacks a platter of fish out of some girl’s hands.  
  
He glances over his shoulder ever so often, and to his surprise, she’s shedding spirits left and right, separating from them like some kind of ameba. He supposes he should be thankful that all those people aren’t dead, but right now he’s more worried about not adding himself to her collection.  
  
Somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchens she starts slowing down, stumbling every few steps, walking slow enough that Roxas has to keep stopping to let her catch up a little. It’ll be no good if he gets too far ahead and she starts eating people again.  
  
By the time the sunlight hits his back, she’s close enough that he’s okay with sprinting down to where the little witch girl is apparently waiting for him, her feet dipped into the water as Larxene paces on the small dock next to her. He wonders, briefly, how she managed to get down there when she was so insistent on needing help escaping.  
  
“Where have you been?” Larxene hisses, yanking the witch girl up by her arm and all but throwing her into the little schooner bobbing on the waves. “Get in, already.”  
  
The thing is really cramped with three people in it, so he hunches down with the witch for most of it as Larxene sets about moving them. “How’d you get out?” he asks, quiet, and the witch girl just smiles and points.  
  
It’s the other girl, finally staggering free of the bathhouse atop a steaming pipe. He takes a deep breath, jolting up fast enough that Larxene curses at him. “Over here,” he shouts, waving his arms.  
  
She notices just as Larxene elbows him back down to the floor. “What the hell are you doing? Don’t call her over here.”  
  
He shrugs. “The bathhouse is driving her crazy. She just needs out and she’ll be fine.”  
  
“Yeah?” Larxene whispers waspishly. “Where’s she gonna go?”  
  
He shrugs again, almost hitting the witch with his shoulder as he watches his little invisible girl leap from the piping and into the water.  
  
“Great, well now she’s following us. Way to go, blondie.”  
  
The witch girl’s been oddly quiet this whole time, so he turns to her, noting the way her skin is already going pink from the sun. “What’s your name, anyway?” he asks. “I can’t just keep calling you witch.”  
  
She stares at him, obviously puzzled. “I… don’t believe I have a name,” she replies.  
  
“Everyone should have a name,” he insists. “Fine. What’s a name that you like?”  
  
She sucks on her bottom lip, her eyes distant as she stares out over the waves.  
  
“Namine,” she finally settles on. “I like Namine.”  
  
In the distance, the other girl seems to have reached the tracks, her form just flickering between herself and one other person—what looks to be a boy, hair similar to Sora’s but darker, clad in a simple yukata. As he watches, the two separate slowly, his form pulling away from hers. When they’re finally separate, the boy simply fades from view.  
  
“Are you sure you want to come with me?” he asks Namine, still watching the other girl along the tracks. She kicks at the water, seemingly enraptured by the way it splashes up her legs. She does it again.  
  
Namine nods. “I do, more than anything.”  
  
They thump up against the tracks before he can say anything else, and Larxene turns to face them both. “You’ll have to walk from here,” she says, something suspiciously like regret clogging her voice. She punches him in the shoulder. “And you better come back, you hear me?”  
  
Carefully he climbs out onto the tracks, shivering when his feet slide into the water. He helps Namine out, and only then does he look at Larxene, who’s glaring at him. “I will,” he promises, smiling at her. “Good to know you care.”  
  
She sniffs, the motion disdainful, the look in her eyes anything but. “Of course I care. I put a lot of work into you. I’d hate for all that work to go down the drain.”  
  
He smirks and on impulse, leans forward to pull her into a hug. It’s short, made awkward by the way the schooner rocks dangerously, nearly sending Larxene into the water. He holds onto her until she finally responds with something other than hissed curses, tentatively wrapping her arms around his shoulders, making a quiet sound into his neck. “I don’t care what anybody else says, you aren’t a total bitch,” he murmurs into her ear.  
  
She laughs, high and sharp, tightening her arms before letting him go. “What are you talking about, kid? I’m definitely a bitch. Don’t think you can tarnish my reputation.”  
  
He rolls his eyes, waving at her as she slowly guides the little boat away, waiting until she gets past the monster girl before turning to follow Namine down the tracks.  
  
“The sunlight feels weird,” Namine says when he catches up. “I didn’t expect it to burn so much.”  
  
“That’s UV rays for you,” he says, shrugging. He can see the platform now, and not a moment too soon, the train fast approaching them from behind.  
  
When it pulls up, it sloshes water onto the platform, washing over his and Namine’s feet. The man who meets them at the door is tall, dark hair and a goofy smile that makes him think of the grinning dogs at the dog park back home. He’s got a bit of an accent and floppy dog ears on the side of his head.  
  
He doesn’t speak, but halts Roxas before letting him on, taking the tickets and gesturing to him and Namine before pointing behind them. The other girl is standing a few feet behind them, so quiet that they hadn’t even noticed her catching up to them, watching the train with a wary expression. When she notices Roxas looking, she straightens up, a flush coming to her cheeks.  
  
“Yes, she’s coming as well,” Namine says from beside him. When he gives her a look, she just shrugs and says, “Well, we do have three tickets.”  
  
The train car is small, weary travelers dotted throughout the cabin, sitting quietly with their luggage. They have no faces, see-through all over, and seeing them, Roxas’ heart aches. They look sad, an aura of exhaustion around them. He wonders where they’re from—what they’re doing. Their dress is off by about forty years, and a thought comes to him—that maybe they’re ghosts. He supposes this is something like the afterlife. He shivers.  
  
The car shakes all around them when it lurches forward, knocking him free of his thoughts. He stumbles forward a step, Namine catching one arm as the other girl catches the other.  
  
It doesn’t take too long to find seats. After all, the cabin is far from full. When the little monster girl sits down beside him, he watches her for a moment out of the corner of his eye. “We’re gonna have to call you something,” he says eventually.  
  
She startles, looking at him with wide eyes. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out. He frowns. “You can’t speak?” he asks. “You did before.”  
  
Namine leans forward until her elbows are on her knees, leaning around him to peer at the other girl. Something crackles between them, something unspoken and powerful, like being stuck between two magnets. “She spoke before because she had the voices of other people to use. I believe that Xehanort did something to her around the time that he captured me, but I can’t quite remember.”  
  
A frisson of unease creeps through his gut. “Should we give her a name, then? If she has no voice, she can’t tell us hers.”  
  
Namine shakes her head. “She’s like me. We have no name.”  
  
“Then we’ll give her one—”  
  
“Xion,” Namine says. She’s looking back out the train window again, staring at the waves the train is stirring up. “It means ‘tide’,” she explains, pulling away from the window to smile softly at the other girl. “And ‘remembrance’. I think she’d like it.”  
  
Roxas jostles Xion with his elbow, trying the name out in his head. “Do you?”  
  
Xion hesitates for a moment, mouth opening and closing several times before she just smiles and nods. Roxas smiles. “Good.”  
  
The hours pass slowly, Xion drifting off to sleep on his shoulder as Namine starts sketching something on some paper that the ticket master had given her. Roxas watches the spirit world pass them by, the hue of the water changing as the sun dips lower and lower in the sky. They pass a little island, populated by just a little farmhouse accompanied by one lone tree.  
  
The first stop goes by without anyone getting off, but the second, a place called Numa Hara that they reach just as the sun is starting to set takes half of their passengers. He watches as they disembark, that inexplicable feeling of sorrow still sitting heavy on his chest. There’s a little girl standing on the platform, utterly transparent, as if her shadow took over her body, that watches him back as the train pulls away.  
  
The sky is bleeding red and pink, and as he stares at it, he thinks of Axel.  
  
 _Hey Roxas, bet you don’t know why the sun sets red._  
  
He thinks of Axel that day, the fire in his palm and the way he’d smiled at Roxas, gesturing at the water streaked red and pink and orange so far below them. How he’d knocked their shoulders together, close enough to kiss, and dripped ice cream in his hair, just to get a rise out of him.  
  
The sun sets and Namine finally succumbs to sleep as well, nodding off with her cheek pillowed against the window just as the last passenger climbs off at the third stop, a station with glittering neon signs and an endless torrent of rain pattering against the windows.  
  
He blinks up at the moon, just starting to come up over the horizon, and feels, for the first time in all of this, completely alone.  
  
.  
  
When Axel wakes it’s to the sight of Terra sleeping hunched over, a bloodied rag and a bucket of water near his knee. He blinks, confused, because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the boiler man not at work before—he’s always working, always, except for the few times that Axel’s seen Ansem down here and…  
  
Well, he doesn’t really want to think about that right now.  
  
He shifts, cataloguing his bumps and bruises and turning up strangely empty. His body aches, sure, but the last thing he remembers is being huddled beneath a tree somewhere, waiting to die.  
  
Except, Roxas’ face comes to mind, streaked with blood, his eyes wide and frightened.  
  
He needs to wake Terra up right now, because if he’s here, a place he’s only ever been in passing, it’s because Roxas brought him here.  
  
He stares at the sleeping spirit, nudging him with his foot. If this is what it looks like, the guy has been looking after him for awhile, he probably deserves a better wake-up call then Axel’s boot.  
  
“Hey, wake up,” he mutters quietly, crouching to Terra’s level and gently patting his face. “Terra,” he whispers urgently. “Wake up.”  
  
Terra is slow to wake, eyelids fluttering as he shifts, body unfolding a little bit at a time. He blinks once, then twice, the bleariness clearing from them as he takes in Axel next to him. “Axel, you’re okay,” he slurs, sitting up and stretching, his back cracking unpleasantly.  
  
“I’m fine,” he says. “But where is R— where is Sai? Can you tell me what’s going on, ‘cause I’m coming up blank.”  
  
Terra gives him a rueful look. “Your boy is fine, not that I can say that about you a couple hours ago. We thought you were going to die.” The silence settles around them, cloying and uncomfortable. “What do you remember?”  
  
“I remember thinking I was going to die. Darkness. And Sai’s voice, calling my name. When I followed his voice, I woke up here with what feels like a whole new body. That’s it.”  
  
Terra snorts. “True love,” he whispers, grinning at Axel. “It breaks all spells. That boy must really care about you if it did that much. He hasn’t had time to get to Swamp Bottom yet.”  
  
Axel’s heart stutters, fear invading like worms. “He’s going to Swamp Bottom?”  
  
Terra nods. “He was going to save you. Looks like he already did.”  
  
Axel gets to his feet quickly, too quickly probably, because his vision greys out. When he comes to a moment later, Terra’s caught him by the shoulder. “Just because you’re healed doesn’t mean you’re running at a hundred and ten percent. Don’t overdo it.”  
  
Axel crooks a smile at him. “Thanks, old man,” he teases, ducking the first hand that comes at him. He’s not so lucky the second time.  
  
“Axel,” he hears when he gets to the door. He pauses on the threshold, bent double and peering over his shoulder at Terra.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You hurt that boy, and trust me, you will regret it.”  
  
He makes it up the stairs in record time.  
  
When he reaches Ansem’s office, the ruler of the bathhouse is snarling at the foreman and a couple of the frogs, his eyes narrowed in anger. Axel knows that face. It doesn’t mean good things. At that moment Ansem sets eyes on him.  
  
“You,” he says, face doing something complicated. “I’d thought you would be dead by now.”  
  
Axel fights down the urge to snap at him, bowing low enough that his hair brushes the floor. “I hate to disappoint, but rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”  
  
“Okay, okay, fine. So you aren’t dead. Well, you’re just the person I was looking for. See, your little boyfriend stole my witch. He let a pint-sized monster into the bathhouse and is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of my property. Bring both of them back here unharmed, kill the monster.”  
  
Axel blinks, straightening out in one smooth movement. Both of the frogs and the foreman look horrified, like they don’t actually want Roxas harmed. Saix is just standing placidly at Ansem’s side, like the loyal lapdog he’s become. Axel thinks about it—of confronting Ansem now, calling his bluff, showing him that he’s not in charge anymore. Immediately, he discards the idea.  
  
“Of course, sir,” he breathes, bending low once more.  
  
The foreman gasps. “Roxas is the one who saved us, sir—”  
  
“You would really kill him?” one of the frogs gasp, the other glaring bloody murder. When Axel says nothing, it hisses, eyes narrowed, “You really don’t have a heart.”  
  
“Will that be all, Superior?” he asks, keeping his voice as even as he can. His chest feels tight, his heart aching. “I believe I have some mice to hunt.”  
  
.  
  
It’s well past nightfall when they arrive at Swamp Bottom, the train rolling to a stop as he shakes the girls awake. They both grumble at him the same way, but are aware enough to shuffle off the train in front of him, barely tripping on the rocky ground.  
  
The air is thick with humidity and the sounds of buzzing insects—everything smelling of stagnant water. It’s dark, the full moon their only light source. As long as their eyes adapt quickly, it won’t be a problem, but without their eyes they won’t be able to go very far.  
  
There’s a path leading away from the platform, the dirt muddy but solid, and Roxas takes it on a whim, carefully helping Namine down when she seems like she might be about to fall on her ass. Xion walks past both of them, almost gliding on the air as she peers curiously around her. Apparently her night vision is better than his, because she hurries ahead, only turning to wait for them to catch up before marching forward again.  
  
The path is long and winding, passing through algae-covered bayous and leaning cypress trees, towering oaks cloaked in spanish moss guiding their way.  
  
“I’ve determined that I don’t like bugs,” Namine says after a long period of silence. “Nor do I like having bare feet.”  
  
Roxas chuckles a bit, arms windmilling frantically when he nearly loses his footing. Xion steadies him, there within seconds. “Being barefoot isn’t that bad unless you’re trekking through a swamp, so don’t write it off just yet.”  
  
She groans, and looks as if she’s about to say more before she freezes.  
  
There’s a light hopping towards them, dim at first, getting brighter as it gets closer and closer. A Will o’ the Wisp, he thinks at first, before he realizes that it’s a semi-sentient lamppost.  
  
It bows to him, which is an experience. Then it just turns back the way it came, stopping after its some distance away, peering back at them like it’s checking to make sure they’re following it. It leads them further and further into the swamp, until the trees fall away, giving way to a small clearing with a little hut in the very center.  
  
It’s a quaint little thing with windows facing the east, a vegetable patch off to the side and smoke coming from the chimney. A wooden fence made of what looks to be the spindly young branches of various trees surrounds the property. It’s onto this that the lamp post leaps, quickly transforming itself into a simple lantern hanging just over the entrance.  
  
The nearer he gets to the door the more things start to smell less of the green of the swamp and more like fresh baked bread. He blinks at the door, nothing like Xehanort’s elaborate setup, just a simple door—wooden with a beat up brass door knob.  
  
He doesn’t have to knock, the door swinging open of it’s own accord. “Come in,” he hears, and shivers, thinking that those were the first words that the fake Ansem ever said to him as well.  
  
The house is… homey, like a little old grandma’s. There are herbs hanging to dry against the walls, a little kitchen area next to the fireplace, and a large table in the center of the room—a bowl of apples sits on the table, ripe and fragrant. The whole place smells like a mix of sage, rosemary, and fruits. Bread appears to be baking in the oven.  
  
“Sit down. I’ll make some tea,” a voice says from behind him. Xion doesn’t move, but both Namine and Roxas jump as the door slams behind them.  
  
He fiddles with the seal as Ansem crosses the room to put the teakettle on, standing there awkwardly even after Xion and Namine have already sat down at the table. Namine pulls an apple from the bowl, bouncing it between her hands, Xion following the movement with her eyes. He bites his lip, watching them sit there. He blinks and Xion darts forward, taking a quick bite of the apple and narrowly missing Namine’s fingers. Namine glares at her.  
  
Finally he can’t take the silence, jogging over to where Ansem is doing something complicated with some loose-leaf tea. “Axel stole this from you, sir,” he says quickly, thrusting the golden seal out between them. “I wanted to give it back.”  
  
Ansem turns to look at him, raising one blonde eyebrow and reaching out to take it from him. “I see,” he says quietly. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what this is?”  
  
He bites his lip, nervously twirling a curl that’s gotten a bit too long. “Terra told me that it was some kind of seal. Powerful. Magical. Axel stole it to help get me back to the human world, so it’s partially my fault. I’m very sorry.”  
  
“Terra?” Ansem asks, cocking his head. “I suppose Xehanort still has him under his spell then.”  
  
Roxas nods. “I don’t know much about it, just that someone he cares for is hurt? I think Ansem—sorry, that Xehanort—is keeping Aqua away from him too, but I’m not sure.”  
  
Ansem regards him carefully, turning back to the tea. “Terra was one of my best customers, a very long time ago. Earth spirits don’t get much downtime, so when he could get away from the human world, he came to me. When he retired, I offered him a job, working with the very foundation of my bathhouse. It was a good position, for a spirit of the earth. Lots of coal, you see.”  
  
Something clatters behind them, but neither of them turns around, even when Xion makes a small squeaky sound of distress.    
  
“He fell in love with a girl there, one of the courtesans whose family had fallen on hard times. After much awkward courting that they think I didn’t notice, they became lovers. When Aqua’s family passed on, she stayed and became an apprentice to Eraqus, my second in command—then a powerful magic user.”  
  
“She stayed because she loved him?” he asks, glancing away from Ansem and into the fire. It swirls, red and gold, almost too pretty to be dangerous. When he looks away, Ansem is nodding, taking the hissing kettle away from the flame.  
  
“She loved him a great deal. When Ventus came along, no one expected for a third to wriggle between them, but that’s exactly what he did. This little wind spirit, just a boy who cleaned the tubs, not much higher in the ranks than the frogs. You can see why people were confused. Two senior members of my staff, all but seduced by a mere cleaning boy? People talked, but they didn’t care. They fell for him as hard as they did for each other and then some. When they weren’t working, they were rarely separate. It was… heartwarming, to see them walk by.”  
  
The tea, now steeping in the teapot, smells fantastic. Ansem grasps it carefully and Roxas walks with him back to the table, taking his seat next to Xion and patiently waiting for the old man to pour tea into the four teacups laid out there. “And then what?”  
  
Ansem takes a sip, not speaking as he rolls the flavor on his tongue, breathing out a soft sigh of bliss after. “Then nothing. They were together for hundreds of years. They were happy. I’m not sure of the details after Xehanort ousted me, but I know that he wouldn’t have had the power to do so had it not been for Terra. I found out later that he used dark magic to rip Ven’s soul from his body, sending it to the human world where it would be destroyed, keeping his body hostage to ensure Terra and Aqua’s cooperation.”  
  
He takes another sip of tea, gesturing for Roxas to do so as well. He lets out a startled noise when the flavor bursts onto his tongue—unlike anything he’s ever had before. Flowery, he thinks. But minty as well. Ansem smiles at him when he gestures for him to go on.  
  
“He used Terra while I was away one day, possessing him with a fragment of darkness and tricking him into killing Eraqus. He nearly killed Aqua too, but in the end she shattered the darkness inside of him. That was when Xehanort knew they needed to be separated, all but locking her on the thirtieth floor. If she left, he told her, he would kill Ven. Terra was enraged, and I hear that he and my apprentice fought. When Terra lost, they struck a deal. Xehanort would not harm Aqua or Ven if Terra stayed in the boiler room and forfeited some of his life force every few years—”  
  
Roxas gives him a strange look, his leg jittering against the table until Namine reaches out to stop it. “But I thought spirits didn’t age?”  
  
Ansem laughs. “All souls age, dear boy. We just do so very slowly. And take it from me, Xehanort may look young, but that face is thanks to Terra’s life force, keeping his soul young and powerful. He is very old, far older than I thought he was when I hired him on as my apprentice.”  
  
“Why did you hire him on?” Roxas asks. Ansem gives him a faintly amused look.  
  
“I am also old, young one. I needed someone to look after the bathhouse once I was gone. In my old age, I was fooled into thinking that Xehanort would be a suitable heir.”  
  
They sip their tea in silence, the quiet only broken by the chirping of crickets outside and the crackle of the fire.  
  
“So that’s it? Xehanort took their lover and has been holding Ven against them all this time? And with the power he got from Terra, he beat you and took over the bathhouse?”  
  
“More or less. There’s power in a name, you know. After stealing Terra’s life force, all he had to do was take my name, and he knew that he would be able to best me. I have spent the years here, biding my time. As I told you before, the seal that dragon stole from me has years of magic stored inside. Magic that I plan to use to take back my bathhouse. You can see why that would be important.”  
  
Roxas nods, watching as Ansem examines the seal. After a moment he sucks in a startled breath. “The protective seal is gone,” he says with surprise.  
  
Roxas winces. “Yeah, if you mean the black slug that was on it, I definitely squashed that thing.” When Ansem just stares at him, he panics. “Terra told me to!”  
  
To his surprise, Ansem starts laughing.  
  
“That wasn’t my slug,” he gasps, minutes later, still chuckling. “That was a fragment of darkness, like the one my apprentice used on Terra. He must have put it inside of Axel to control him as well.”  
  
His eyes are mirthful again, crinkled at the corners, droplets of tears clinging to his greying eyelashes. “You squashed it,” he whispers again, shaking his head. “Such an amusing boy. What happened to my spell, then? Only love can break it, you know.”  
  
“Love?” he asks as Ansem recovers from his laughing fit, getting back to his feet and crossing to a cabinet. The array of sweets he brings back to the table is enough to make his mouth water, but he doesn’t touch any of it, watching as Namine and Xion both dig in, still strangely silent.  
  
“Love,” Ansem repeats, nodding. “It’s all very fairytale, but nothing can break spells quite like true love. I’m hardly a romantic, but I tried for years and it was still the only thing that could break my spells.” He chuckles, shaking his head as Roxas finally reaches out and snags some form of frosted gingerbread. “Speaking of which, I’ve got something for the three of you to do while we chat.”  
  
To Roxas’ surprise, he pulls out a sewing machine stashed amongst baskets of dried flowers and yarn. “Don’t give me that look,” Ansem says, reproachful, as Roxas stares at him. “It calms my magic and is wonderful material for spellwork. Now, choose your weapon.”  
  
Once they’re all settled, the machine whirring between them, Roxas decides to ask a question that’s been bugging him. “So…” he whispers, foot pushing down on the pedal. “Do you know why I look like Ven?”  
  
Ansem gives him a considering look. “I wasn’t aware that you knew that you looked like him.”  
  
Roxas chuckles a little. “Of course I do. Everyone says so. And the way Terra looks at me… it’s like he’s sad, all the time.”  
  
“He has good reason to be, considering that you’re housing Ven’s soul inside of your heart.”  
  
He drops the string he’s holding. Even Namine stops, looking at Ansem with something like apprehension. “You’re kidding, right?”  
  
Ansem shakes his head. “It isn’t unheard of, for a defenseless soul loosed on the human world to take refuge inside a human. I imagine that Ven wandered for some time before he found your brother inside your mother’s womb. You’ll have to ask Ven himself if you want to know the rest of the tale.”  
  
“How can I ask him, though?”  
  
Ansem shrugs, taking a bite of cookie. The crumbs cling to his short beard. “He’s inside of you. You must journey deep within yourself to find him, and then you can set him free.”  
  
“Yeah, but how.”  
  
Ansem smirks. “Magic isn’t as complicated as most people think it is, and this, strictly speaking, is not magic.”  
  
“Stop giving me riddles and just tell me,” Roxas hisses, yanking too hard on a piece of string and making the sewing machine growl at him.  
  
“It’s really quite simple. I spiked your tea with dream root. With its aid, you can delve deep into your own mind. I don’t suppose you’re feeling sleepy yet?”  
  
As a matter of fact, he is. He’d assumed it was because he’s been up for more than twenty-four very action-packed hours, but now that he’s thinking about it, he realizes it’s not entirely normal for his eyelids to be drooping this much. He supposes that Ansem’s story is the only thing that’s been keeping his brain active enough to stay awake.  
  
He glares at Namine. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”  
  
She shrugs, still weaving thread together. “I knew that he put something in your tea. I had no idea what it was.”  
  
The look Roxas gives her is faintly hurt, despite all his efforts to mask it with anger. “Why didn’t you tell me? He could have been poisoning me.”  
  
She sighs. “His intentions were not malicious. If they were, I would have stopped him. I knew that whatever he was doing, it would help you in the long run.”  
  
The dream root seems to be working, and hazily, he hears Ansem say to Xion, “Take him over to those pillows. He’ll be comfortable there.”  
  
The pillows are soft. Like little warm clouds. Xion’s face takes up his entire world for a moment, her mouth twisted with guilt, eyes sparking with concern. He pats her arm, trying to convey that he isn’t mad at her.  
  
She moves away, and he finds Ansem looking down on him. “Don’t forget,” Ansem says gravely. “Your goal is to find Ven.”  
  
The last thing he remembers before everything fades to black is his own voice, slurring, “you’re a dick” and the chuckle he gets in response.  
  
.  
  
The inside of his heart seems to take after the bathhouse, something that is only mildly alarming.  
  
“Hello?” he calls, unable to repress a shiver when his voice echoes down the hall. He’s never seen the bathhouse this empty. Before, even in the early hours of the morning, there would still be a guard on duty. Xigbar sipping tea and snapping him a quick salute as he wandered by, or Xaldin, whose glare always followed him to the front doors. It’s eerie.  
  
Something clatters behind him, and he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.  
  
When he turns to look, there’s nothing there.  
  
“Okay, this is too creepy,” he says. His own voice isn’t much of a comfort, especially when it echoes so strangely, but it is a break in the silence.  
  
He meanders along, retracing steps. His and Demyx’s room is empty, the futons all tucked away—sunlight streaming through the windows. The tide is also apparently out, because when he goes to check the window, he catches sight of the tracks, completely bereft of water.  
  
On the lower floors, all the tubs sit empty of both water and guests. He walks amongst them, marveling at how clean all of them seem to be.  
  
From there, he makes his way to where Terra would be—and that’s where things get interesting.  
  
The boiler room looks much the same as he remembers, stiflingly hot and faintly cluttered, the flames from the boiler illuminating the room in an eerie red glow. He blinks, searching for some sign of the sootballs, and someone giggles behind him.  
  
When he spins, Aqua is sitting up on the platform next to a smiling Terra, laughing at something he’s saying. As he watches, she leans forward to kiss him.  
  
He tries not to look, feeling awkward as she slides into his lap, nipping at his mouth as his hands tickle up her ribs. She gasps, her mouth open and wet when one of those hands slips inside her robes, back arching. And then, curiously, she turns to him. Her robe has slid partly down one shoulder, revealing the slightest glimpse of a dusky pink nipple, the curve of a small pert breast.  
  
She beckons to him, smiling, and his eyes widen as someone who looks just like him jogs over to join them.  
  
He blinks, and the image is gone, the boiler room just as empty as the rest of the bathhouse.  
  
He has another vision in Aqua’s room, the three of them laughing on her bed in various states of undress. After that, he notices them all over—always out of the corner of his eye, like ghosts.  
  
The last place he checks is Xehanort’s office, or rather, Namine’s weird birdcage room.  
  
It’s there that he finds the groove between the door and the wall, and really, he shouldn’t be surprised that this place has secret passages.  
  
The hidden hallway opens up into a small white room, bare except for the large throne-like chair in the center.  
  
Ven watches him warily as he enters.  
  
“I wondered when you’d show up.”  
  
Roxas stares at him. “You mean, you knew?”  
  
Ven shrugs, slipping free of the chair and crossing to him. They stare at each other, each looking for differences, some small flaw that would mark them as different. Roxas can’t find any, and he’s pretty sure Ven can’t either. “Of course I knew. I’m you. You’re me. Except… not.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Ven sighs, and the room fades away from them. When everything comes back into focus, they’re in a park, and on a bench to their right sits a woman with long, brown hair and eyes the precise shade of Sora’s.  
  
“That’s… my mother.”  
  
Ven nods. “And your brother Sora, just a tiny bundle of cells then.”  
  
“But not me?”  
  
Ven guides them to the bench, where Roxas carefully takes a seat next to the woman. He stares, realizing how much he’s forgotten about her. She looks like them, he thinks. “No, not you. See, I found her like this. I’d wandered for years, until my spirit was falling apart, unprotected from the human world. I had nearly faded away, and then I found her—or rather, I found your brother, his heart shining so bright that even then you could see him if you were blind.”  
  
He smiles and when Roxas blinks down at his mother’s stomach, there’s a warm glow surrounding it. “His heart welcomed me in like I was a cherished friend. He gave me something back when I needed it most. A second chance. When I hid inside his heart, one egg split into two, a second baby boy forming from his heart and mine.”  
  
“And… that was me?”  
  
Ven nods, grinning and jostling him with a wayward elbow. “Now you’re gettin’ it.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“You’re gonna ask what happened aren’t you?” Ven asks, eyebrow raised. “Truth is, I don’t know. One day I was with Aqua and Terra, the next Xehanort had me in Ansem’s office, ripping my soul in half.”  
  
Roxas makes a startled noise.  
  
“He has a thing for light and dark. I think he was experimenting, trying to perfect something or another. Haven’t you ever seen the shadows beneath the foundation?” he asks knowingly. Roxas thinks about the shadowy creatures in that strangely lit cavern and shivers.  
  
“Anyway,” Ven is saying. “He sent me to the human world, but to my knowledge, the darker half of my soul is still wandering the bathhouse.”  
  
An image walks by, flickering with static, of a young man who looks like Sora—inky dark hair and cat-like golden eyes the only difference. “I remember him,” Roxas says, thinking back to Xion staggering up the tracks. How the last spirit to separate from her had been a boy who looked like Sora.  
  
“Yeah, well, that him is me—though I suppose at this point we’ve gone so long apart that it might shock our systems if we were forced back together.” Ven shakes his head, and the park becomes a forest. There’s a blur of red somewhere up in the branches of the tree nearest to them, and then a younger, smiling Axel is swinging down out of the tree next to a shorter Ven.  
  
“I'll see you when I see you,” he hears Axel say, clear as day. His voice is younger, still cracking, and his hair is cut short, but it’s him. “After all, we're friends now. Get it memorized.”  
  
The mini version of Ven laughs, “Okay, Lea.”  
  
“What is it with you and picking up stray puppies?” a figure says in the distance as Axel jogs off, the smaller Ven still watching on. He’s obviously straining to hear, because the voice is crackling and weak, like a shot radio signal.  
  
Axel’s voice comes through a little better. “I want everybody I meet to remember me,” he says, laughing. “Inside people’s memories... I can live forever.”  
  
When the image fades, they’re back at the start, in that weird room next to Xehanort’s office.  
  
“What was that?” he gasps, his heart still pounding.  
  
Ven smiles sadly. “Your boyfriend, a couple hundred years ago, back when we were still human. Before the wind made me its child and the fire made him its.” He bites his lip, like he’s thinking about something. “I thought you might want to see that, but the memory kind of sprung up on me there or I would have given you more warning,” he confesses, tone guilty.  
  
Roxas doesn’t give two shits how unprepared he was for the memory. “It was real though? His name’s really Lea?”  
  
Ven’s smile turns soft, his eyes warm with affection. “Yeah, it is. He was my friend, all those years ago, though I doubt he remembers. Now how about you wake up and go remind him of his name. I’m sure you’ll at least get a good kiss out of it.”  
  
Roxas blushes, but when the rest of the statement sinks in, he frowns. “I’m not leaving without you. Terra and Aqua miss you. You can’t hide in here forever.”  
  
Ven rolls his eyes, collapsing into that chair of his. He examines his nails, like he’s got more important things to do. “Sure I can. I’ve hidden here your entire life.”  
  
The look Roxas gives him is disappointed, matching the anxiety curling in his gut. “You don’t want to though,” he says confidently. He isn’t presuming anything, it’s just a fact. Ven misses them too, he knows so. “I don’t care how much of a hardass you think you are now, you miss them.”  
  
Ven’s shoulders start hunching up around his ears, eyes gone steely and defensive. “If I stay here, they can’t get hurt.”  
  
His voice is small, a child’s voice who's scared of the monster under his bed.  
  
“If you stay here, they will just keep hurting,” he insists, reaching out to lay a hand on Ven’s shoulder. He flinches, like—well, like he hasn’t had any human contact in years.  
  
“But—”  
  
Roxas glares at him, gathering the folds of reality around him. This is his heart, his body that ingested that dream root. He can do this. He can wake them both up. “No buts. This is way overdue. I’ll see you on the other side.”  
  
He gives a little push, and just like that, Ven disappears. The room warps around him, changing, and when it settles, he recognizes the roof of the bathhouse—the sun shining red all around him. Amaterasu blushing, he thinks, and chuckles. “Great. Now how do I get out?”  
  
 _Roxas_ , he hears, like a whisper on the wind. The voice is unfamiliar, but something about it bugs him, and for a moment, he’s back in his brother’s car, leaning up against that person that he can’t quite remember.  
  
 _Roxas_!  
  
The voice is louder this time, and he blinks, the image right there—flickering with static. The shape of a girl, petite, with a dimpled smile.  
  
“Wake up!”  
  
When he comes to, Namine’s staring down at him, shaking him. Ansem is just behind her, peering down at him over her shoulder. His head, he realizes, is pillowed on Xion’s lap. It’s her hands that are carding through his hair, inexplicably gentle.  
  
“You were out for quite some time,” Ansem remarks. It’s true, Roxas realizes. There’s yarn and silk scattered all over the place, and when he blinks, he realizes that there’s a hairtie hugging both Xion and Namine’s wrists. They shimmer, one blue and one green, and he wonders what they’re made of, to sparkle like that.  
  
“Did you succeed in waking Ventus?” Ansem asks. Roxas blinks, getting the feeling that this isn’t the first time he’s asked. It would be too simple if Ven’s soul just rose out of him, perfectly visible. He nods, sitting up slowly.  
  
“I think so,” he says slowly, stretching his muscles one by one. They feel sore, like he’s been in one position for too long.  
  
“Well, I suppose that’s good. I was talking to Namine and Xion about your brother’s situation while you were asleep. The only thing I can say on the matter is to try to remember everything you possibly can about that day.”  
  
Roxas gets a flash of that voice again, so unfamiliar, yet not.  
  
 _“Everything_ ,” Ansem insists. “Remember. Once you’ve met someone, you never truly forget them. Weave the threads of your memory together, and afterwards, you’ll be able to create something beautiful.”  
  
He tries. He really does. He sits there for ages, trying his best to remember everything. The human world is hazy in his mind, like it’s not quite real, but he remembers that day—the radio turned up too high, Sora screaming along with the lyrics and Riku smiling gently next to him. Roxas in the back watching the trees pass, seeing the little shrines along the roadside. Someone tapping him on the back and when he turned, smiling—  
  
Everything is blank.  
  
“I can’t do it,” he whispers, burying his face in his hands. His eyes burn, tears threatening to overflow.  
  
Xion makes a soft little noise and he feels the rush of air when she crouches down next to him. The hair tie around her wrist catches the light when he opens his eyes, and he blinks, dazzled, as she presses something into his palms. It’s… some kind of bracelet, like the wrist cuffs he used to wear when he was in his punkish, skateboarding days. It’s done in black and white, the lack of color startling. He hadn’t known that Ansem even had black and white materials to work with.  
  
She smiles at him, sliding it onto his wrist, and helplessly, he gives her a watery smile back. “Thanks,” he says, touching her hair gently.  
  
“It’ll protect you,” Ansem says. He’s reading something, glasses perched on the end of his nose. “It’s made from the threads that your loved ones wove together, the most powerful magic of all.”  
  
Xion coos at him, tapping his face until he smiles.  
  
The windows rattle.  
  
“Ah, I see we have another guest.”  
  
.  
  
The flight there isn’t bad. The night air is cool, the clouds wispy as moisture collects on his scales. It’s good, because his entire body is overheated, little licks of flame trickling out of his open mouth. He swallows the fire back down, watching the swamplands unfold beneath him.  
  
He passes over the tree that he’d hidden beneath, gut churning.  
  
The little hut hasn’t changed from when he was here last—the glass has been cleaned up, the window that he’d broken in his haste to get away repaired. He almost expects another flock of curses to pursue him, but he lands with no problem, right as the door starts creaking open.  
  
Roxas is a sight for sore eyes, blue eyes wide as they take him in. He’s wearing his ridiculous human clothes, the ones that still smell like the human world, the pants hanging loose around his hips.  
  
Axel’s already changing back into his human form even though he’s still a foot above the ground.  
  
“Axel,” he hears, and that’s all the warning he gets before he’s getting tackled into the dirt, Roxas peppering his face in kisses and squirming in his lap. “Axel, Axel, Axel,” he’s saying, like a mantra, a smile splitting his face. Axel thinks back to when it was difficult to get a smile out of the kid and chuckles, surging up and capturing Roxas’ lips with his own.  
  
The sound that Roxas makes has his heart doing a little flip in his chest, startled and happy all at once as Roxas sighs, deepening the kiss, his hands sliding into Axel’s hair. The only other kiss they’d exchanged had been wet and hard, done on a whim that neither of them were willing to back out of. This one is different, his heart clenching and unclenching on some emotion, unyielding and bright, as Roxas makes another happy little noise.  
  
“You’re okay,” he’s breathing in between kisses. “Thank goodness. Ansem said—but—”  
  
“He didn’t believe me,” a voice says from the doorway of the little house, and Axel tears his eyes away from Roxas to see the man from before, the one he’d stolen the seal from.  
  
“Your name is Ansem?” he asks, and Roxas gently guides their mouths back together.  
  
“I’ll tell you later,” he breathes against Axel’s lips. “Kiss me now.”  
  
“Well girls,” he hears, as if from a great distance away. “I suppose that’s our cue to give them some alone time. Come along now.”  
  
.  
  
It’s been a long, long time since Ven has walked these halls in a body he could truly call his own. As things currently stand, his body is weak; while the bodies of spirits don’t quite atrophy the way humans do, it’s been years since his body has done more than breathe on its own. He’s tired, limping his way through Xehanort’s halls, exhausted by the time he gets to the huge lobby housing the elevator.  
  
“You’re back, I see,” a voice whispers from the darkness.  
  
Ven doesn’t have to look to know who it is, his body recognizing parts of itself. With trembling fingers, he tries to yank on the lever to call the elevator. His shaking arms can’t quite manage it, even when he puts all of his body weight into it. Exhausted and panting, he slumps against the elevator door.  
  
He jumps when another hand reaches out, grabbing and pulling the lever easily.  
  
The creature made of darkness looks much like him and yet at the same time, not at all. It regards him with golden eyes, its gaze knowing. “You’re going to them, aren’t you?” it asks, reclining on the wall next to him.  
  
He nods.  
  
“You’ll want to find Aqua first. Her floor is closer and she’ll be able to help you get to the boiler room without passing out.”  
  
His… shadow’s eyes are shrewd, gleaming with intelligence. “Why are you helping me?” he gasps, the elevator dinging behind him. The creature helpfully holds the door for him.  
  
It shrugs. “I have no reason to not help myself.”  
  
“Yes, but you have no reason to help me either.”  
  
It grins, a flash of white teeth in the dark, and helps him onto the elevator. The places where their skin brush together erupts into goosebumps.  
  
“Sure I do. You’re planning on getting rid of my master, are you not? We may not be compatible anymore, but I would like to be free from the man who rules this bathhouse. You forget that all these years, I’ve been kept prisoner same as you.”  
  
That’s all that it will say on the matter, though it does help him to Aqua’s floor before it vanishes with one last grin. The whole experience has left him remarkably unsettled as he staggers down the hallway. He has no idea which room she’s in, but halfway down the hall he runs into one of the women that Roxas has taken to, the blonde one—Larxene?  
  
“Roxas!” she calls, her eyes brightening. “I didn’t think you would be back so soon.”  
  
He doesn’t have the breath to speak, though in the end he doesn’t have to. Her expression falters when she takes notice of his clothes, the thin white garments he’d been wearing all those years ago when he was first taken. They’re mussed, wrinkled from all the years he’s spent in them, the creases in the cloth probably permanent.  
  
“You aren’t him,” she whispers, her eyes widening. “Then—”  
  
“Can you please take me to Aqua?” he gasps, mustering up a breath of air.  
  
She shrieks, lunging forward, and for a moment, he’s terrified that she’s going to heft him into her arms. She doesn’t, though with how little he weighs, she probably could.  
  
Aqua’s room isn’t too far away, a dozen paces or so, Larxene dragging him through the door without knocking. She’s grinning, Ven just knows she is. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she says, and Aqua turns from her vanity, ever so slowly.  
  
His heart hurts. His heart aches and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He doesn’t care that he last saw her a week ago through Roxas’ eyes, seeing her with his own knocks something in his chest loose. There are tears sliding down his cheeks as her eyes run up and down his body, surprised and confused. She doesn’t move, and he needs to be near her—needs to be touching her, so he breaks free of Larxene’s hold, whimpering a little when he stumbles halfway there.  
  
She catches him, her arms going around his shoulders as she guides him to a seat on her bed. She stoops down to his level, so close to him, her eyes peering into his. They’re as blue as he remembers, like the glimmer of a pool of water in the midday sun.  
  
“Ven?” she whispers, and he gasps, half-sobbing, half-laughing her name in return.  
  
They probably aren’t very subtle, too wrapped up in each other as they stumble from her bed to the elevators. He doesn’t know where Larxene has gone, and honestly, he’s too caught up in other things to care. By the time they get down to the boiler room, they’re both sobbing a little, emotion caught in his chest, choking him.  
  
Aqua slides the door open, grinning as she helps him up.  
  
Terra’s staring at them, eyes wide, limbs frozen, like he’s watching a mirage come to life. Aqua has always been the most patient of the three of them, but she isn’t this time, a wordless noise emerging from her lips before she throws herself into his arms, kissing him all over.  
  
He’s frozen, arms hovering around her waist without touching before she growls, grabbing two of his arms and jerking them onto her skin.  
  
The noise Terra makes in return makes something in Ven’s heart snap and bleed. It hurts, so much to know that all this time they were hurting just as much as he was.  
  
He sighs, slumping against Aqua’s side, exhausted but utterly content as they both turn kisses onto him.  
  
He laughs, and for the first time in so very, very long, he feels at home.  
  
.  
  
Inevitably, the kisses turn into something more.  
  
“We should probably do this out of view of the house,” he gasps into Roxas’ neck. “Just saying. I doubt this other Ansem would want us doing the nasty on his front lawn.”  
  
“Oh my god, fine,” Roxas gasps, dragging them to their feet and setting off towards the line of oaks surrounding the property. They reach the treeline, still clinging to each other, and Roxas pushes him back down, his spine knocking uncomfortably against a tree root. It’s possible that there was a little gasp of pain involved, because Roxas slides into his lap in one smooth motion, kissing his jaw gently to soothe away the hurt.  
  
“So, think your dick is still cursed?” Roxas asks, grinding none-too-subtly against him. Whatever his pants are made of, they’re rough even through the fabric of Axel’s clothes, the friction almost too good—too painful, too sweet.  
  
“Maybe,” he whispers, breath hitching when Roxas twists his hips. “Only one way to find out.”  
  
The trees are thick enough that the moonlight only penetrates through the branches in scattered patches, but he can still see the curve of Roxas’ grin in the dim light. It makes him want to kiss it, so he does.  
  
They wriggle free of their clothes, awkward and uncaring, elbows and knees too close to places they shouldn’t be, but it’s worth it for the way they slide together afterward, skin touching skin.  
  
Roxas is warm, but Axel knows he’s warmer, flame running just beneath his skin, fire in his veins. He wonders if he’s too warm for Roxas to stand, then immediately puts the thought from his mind when Roxas takes their cocks together in one hand.  
  
He groans, back arching off the dirt, and gasps, “I think we’re good.”  
  
Roxas chuckles, jerking them off with rough, choppy movements—too caught up to make the sex pretty. It’s good, Axel thinks. He likes it better that way, when it’s too real to be practiced, too desperate for it to be beautiful.  
  
When the pleasure starts to get too intense, Roxas slumps against him, rutting them together, making little shivery noises against his neck.  
  
It’s quick, maybe a little rougher than either of them had wanted, but there’s no way to turn a romp in the woods into _making love_. There are no sheets for him to clench his fingers into, so he digs his nails into the dirt, fighting to keep himself human. When Roxas throws his head back and comes, Axel leans in and bites the fragile, open line of his neck, delighting in the way Roxas’ cock twitches against his, come slicking his belly—the startled, helplessly aroused noise that he makes.  
  
Roxas whimpers, locking their lips together once more, and Axel’s gone.  
  
They lie together, staring up at the spanish moss swaying gently in the breeze, the faint rays of moonlight that makes it through the trees.  
  
The silence isn’t awkward, and he’s thankful for that. Roxas laughs when Axel reaches over to tickle his come-slicked belly, breath hitching happily when Axel rolls on top of him, kissing him long and slow.  
  
It’s a long time before they manage to convince each other that they should probably get back to the house, that if they take too long Ansem might come looking for them.  
  
The look they get from Ansem when they come back to the house makes Roxas flush bright red, and he stammers for a moment, standing there in the doorway before Axel decides to take pity on him.  
  
“I apologize for my theft before, sir,” he says. “There are no excuses for my behavior and I will accept any punishment you decides befits the crime.”  
  
Ansem watches him carefully, the little no-face girl peering curiously out from behind him. Axel isn’t stupid, he knows that their clothes are ruffled. They smell like sweat, dirt, and come, but he could care less. Roxas’ hand is linked with his, and he’s happier than he’s ever been before.  
  
“I will forgive your theft, dear boy, provided that you care for the child next to you until the end of your days.”  
  
Roxas squeaks beside him, his grip gone painfully tight, but all Axel does is nod. “Is that all you ask of me?”  
  
Ansem smirks, yellow eyes amused. He shakes his head. “I am also going to ask you to assist me in taking back my bathhouse, but then, you knew that, didn’t you?”  
  
.  
  
Ansem tells them that he will take the girls back, and for that Roxas is thankful. He doesn’t know how Ansem plans to do so, but he trusts the old man.  
  
So it’s just him, Axel, and the sky stretched before them when the memory hits him.  
  
He blinks, and a fire roars all around him. He’s crying, choking from the smoke, and there’s a face before him—serpentine, with black and red scales, red fur along the neck that he grips with trembling hands. Sora’s at Riku’s house for the day, and it’s just mom and dad there with him. Dad’s passed out on the couch and mom’s crying in the bedroom, and she doesn’t answer when Roxas knocks on her door, terrified as the first wave of smoke sweeps through the hall.  
  
He hides in a closet, sobbing for his brother, for his mom, anybody.  
  
Nobody believed him when he said that a dragon guided him from the fire, not even his brother. But then, who’s going to believe a three year old saying something so outrageous?  
  
“I remember you,” he mumbles, face pressed into Axel’s fur.  
  
Axel goes stiff beneath him, so Roxas pets at his snout, shushing him faintly. “When I was little, my dad passed out and caught the house on fire. I was so tiny, I couldn’t even reach the handle of the front door, so I hid in a closet. Even that young, I remember knowing that I was going to die. And then… then a dragon materialized out of the flames and led me to safety. That was you, wasn’t it?”  
  
Axel snorts, tossing his head, and Roxas laughs. “I could have died in that fire, but you saved me. See? I knew you were a good guy.”  
  
.  
  
They fill the silence with talk of everything that has passed between them, Roxas yawning loudly on his back as he tells Axel about how he’d crashed into the bathhouse, dying and half crazed—about the witch and Xion, how Terra had given them train tickets to get to Swamp Bottom, about _Xehanort_ stealing Ansem’s name and his bathhouse.  
  
Then he tells him about Ven, the boy that Axel only knows in passing.  
  
He tells Axel about the things he’d seen inside their heart, of the short-haired human Axel who used to be Ven’s friend.  
  
“Lea,” Roxas murmurs into the quiet, the wind rushing around them as the stars glimmer overhead. “That’s your real name.”  
  
The memories don’t come all at once. They trickle in slowly, of the human life that Axel had once lead—the one that ended in a burning forest, Axel himself rising from the forest’s ashes as a child of the flame.  
  
He remembers the village, and being alone, his parents having either died or abandoned him. He remembers Isa, and a flicker of pain goes through his heart at that fragment of a once-lived dream—all these years spent with Saix right in front of him, the two of them not even remembering each other.  
  
And there’s Ven, embedded deep in his memories—the kid from the neighboring village who occasionally came to the forest to play with him and Isa. He wonders if that’s the reason that he’d spared Roxas back then, that first time in the fire and the second time on the bridge to the spirit world.  
  
The next thing he knows, they’re falling, a shower of scales falling away from his body to reveal the human one beneath. He laughs, delighted, his true name sparking a flame in his heart that he thought he’d lost ages ago.  
  
For all that they’re falling through the clouds, the look Roxas is giving him is calm—a soft smile smoothing the line of his jaw. Axel, helpless, clasps that curve of elegant bone and draws them closer, until his brow rests against Roxas’.  
  
He chokes on a sob, surging emotion clogging his throat, and rubs their cheeks together, wordless and thankful, because he _remembers_.  
  
They fall in a shower of stardust scales, glimmering red and black like embers in the night, and there are no words between them after that—no words to convey everything warming the space behind his ribs.  
  
They fall and fall and fall, hands locked together, and just as the water is rushing up to meet them, they fly under the star-drenched sky.

.

 

  
  
.  
  
It’s morning by the time they get to the outskirts of the bathhouse, Axel landing them on their cliff face next to the pig pen. Ansem and the girls are waiting for them there, sprawled out in the sun. Roxas has no idea how they beat them there, but he puts it from his mind as Axel lands carefully, both of them taking a giddy step onto the ground.  
  
“So, what’s the plan?” Axel asks Ansem, settling on the grass beside them.  
  
Ansem’s eyes open slowly, and they’re sleepy, but determined. “Part of the plan is already in motion. By now, I’m sure Ven has met with Terra and Aqua, and the three of them can certainly manage to find people to help our cause.”  
  
“Yeah, but is that it? Just fight Xehanort? The man who has your power and Terra’s? ‘Cause I gotta say, not a great plan.”  
  
Ansem smiles, his eyes flicking over to the two girls sleeping next to him. “We also have his witch.”  
  
None of them really want to wake the girls, but the decision is made for them when the screaming starts.  
  
They don’t have to go very far, because Xehanort is standing on the bridge—Saix and his Guardian beside him as Terra, Ven, Aqua, and half the bathhouse glare him down. Despite this, he looks unruffled, staring at them cooly, like he hasn’t a care in the world.  
  
“Submit,” he tells them. “And I will forgive this little indiscretion.”  
  
Aqua glares at him, Ven leaning against Terra beside her. Her hands are wreathed in blue flames, her eyes like chips of ice. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to scare you,” she hisses. “He’s stolen our names, our lives, and our memories. He has to pay.”  
  
She’s the first to fling herself forward, the fire lashing out like whips toward Xehanort’s face. He neatly sidesteps her attack, laughing as she staggers back around, pulling water from the river beneath them and freezing it, sending the needle-sharp ice-daggers in his direction.  
  
They watch her for a moment, gaping as she lands one hit, then two, then three. There’s blood in Xehanort’s hair, and for precious few seconds, Roxas thinks that they might not need Namine for this.  
  
Then Xehanort gives up all pretenses of playing it cool and starts flinging his own spells. It’s pretty in a way, the magic flashing by them like shooting stars. Saix snarls, darting around Aqua to get to Terra as the guardian goes for the nearest bathhouse workers.  
  
“Now would probably be the time for backup,” Roxas says, and before he can blink, Axel’s joined the fray—going straight for Xehanort.  
  
Who doesn’t seem at all surprised to see him.  
  
“I thought it was you who let that human in,” Xehanort says, sidestepping another whip of flames. “You smelled of him for days, you know.”  
  
Axel snarls, a wheel of fire appearing in his hand. He flings it and Xehanort laughs, catching it and hurling it straight back at Axel.  
  
He blocks some spell that looks like a fork of lightning and blasts Larxene with something that smells of darkness. She screams, falling back and clutching one eye, and Aqua darts in with some kind of blade, sliding it into Xehanort’s heart up to the hilt.  
  
She flashes him a dangerous smile, half her face streaked in blood, and twists the blade.  
  
He laughs.  
  
He throws his head back and laughs, and then, before any of them can blink, rips the blade from his chest and thrusts it into the soft, unprotected flesh of Aqua’s belly.  
  
Everything stops. The world slows down, and from a distance, he hears Terra shout in dismay. Aqua’s eyes widen, and she gurgles, blood bubbling up from her lips and dribbling down over her chin. She takes forever to fall.  
  
Things move very quickly after that. Axel goes down under Saix, his old friend’s teeth in the meat of his shoulder. The guardian snarls, ripping Marluxia’s heart from his body. Ven screams, forgetting the failings of his body and charging Xehanort, only to have Xehanort catch hold of him by his skull. Roxas watches, horrified, as Ven writhes, hissing curses as Xehanort smirks.  
  
Xehanort’s grasp tightens as he does something, and ice starts to creep over Ven’s body, freezing him bit by bit.  
  
“Stop!”  
  
He doesn’t know who shouts, but he thinks it might have been him.  
  
Someone grasps his shoulder when he attempts to charge forward, and he turns, a snarl on his face that goes slack when he sees who has a hold of him.  
  
Namine’s eyes aren’t on his—they’re still focused on the carnage happening in front of them, hard and cold, like glass. She shakes her head, passing him off to Ansem as both her and Xion step forward, hands linked.  
  
“Stop,” she says, softly. When nobody pays her any mind, her eyes flash, her hand tightening around Xion’s. “I said, stop.”  
  
This time, everyone stops, and not just stop—they freeze. It’s like time’s gone still around them, Demyx frozen while offering Xigbar a hand up, Larxene on the ground, her face a mask of fury.  
  
Terra is still stooped over Aqua, staring at Ven and Xehanort in horror. Even Ansem is frozen next to him, mouth half open, as if he’d been about to say something.  
  
“What did you do?” he breathes, taking a hesitant step forward.  
  
They turn to him as one, but it’s Namine who speaks. “I am what he made of me,” she whispers. She glances at Xion, giving her a small, apologetic smile. “We are what he made us. We are what happens when someone experiments with the darkness.”  
  
Xion makes a little noise, a small click in the back of her throat, and Namine turns to cup her face. “Follow the darkness,” she breathes, and Roxas knows that she isn’t talking to him. “Truly stare into it and never look away. You won’t be afraid of anything again. You have to remember to be brave, Xion. Know that the darkness is there and don’t give in. We can do this.”  
  
“What are you going to do to him?” he asks, fear choking his voice.  
  
They smile at him as one, and there’s something there that he’s forgetting, something so familiar—  
  
“We’re just doing to him what he made me do to myself, to you, to Axel. To all those poor spirits he brought to my birdcage that walked away just a fraction emptier.”  
  
They’re in front of Xehanort now, the chill emanating from Ven making their skin wash over in gooseflesh. Their faces are lit up by the blue tint of Xehanort’s magic, still smiling as they both reach out to touch his face.  
  
“We’re going to make him forget,” they say together, a spark blinding him momentarily as their flesh touches his.  
  
When he opens his eyes, the world is in motion once more. For the most part, everyone looks confused. Ven is slumped onto the pavement, everything from the waist up encased in ice.  
  
Xehanort is blinking down at Namine and Xion, bewildered.  
  
“Do I know you?” he asks, brow crinkling.  
  
They both smile.  
  
“Welcome to our bathhouse,” Namine breathes.  
  
“We hope you enjoy your stay,” Xion finishes, her voice so much like Namine’s, like—  
  
Like Kairi’s.  
  
He remembers her now, in the backseat of the car, leaning against him. How Sora and Riku had bitched at the smell as Roxas painted her toenails pink. How she’d grinned at him after Riku called shotgun, wrapping an arm around him as she chirped, “Guess I’m stuck in the back with you, little brother,” and how he’d rolled his eyes, protesting that he wasn’t her little brother until she hitched herself to Sora.  
  
He stares at Namine, her heart-shaped face and pale blue eyes, and how the only thing that looks the same about the two of them is the way their bodies are shaped, the very framework beneath their skin. Xion looks more like her than Namine does. They at least share the same shade of blue eyes, the same tanned skin.  
  
He forgot her, he thinks. He forgot Kairi.  
  
No, _Namine_ made him forget Kairi.  
  
She meets his eyes then, turning away from Xehanort, her eyes widening when they meet his. They stare at each other, shocked, until her shoulders slump, and she gives him a little nod.  
  
 _Dream’s over_ , he remembers Kairi saying that first day, leaving the beach behind them. _Time to head home._  
  
.  
  
The game is over, though this whole ordeal has never really been a game. She sees Roxas looking at her in the aftermath, Xehanort’s memories still clinging and viscous to the back of her skull, and knows that their time is up.  
  
She still has some things to do before she goes.  
  
The crowd is roaring around her, bathhouse employees and patrons alike cheering loudly. Xehanort himself looks confused, so she touches the tips of her fingers to his jawline.  
  
He crumples.  
  
No one catches him.  
  
A bridge is not the best place for a battle, but this one withstood it well. She touches the flaking paint of the railing, feels the breeze on her face, and wonders if everything felt this real before she knew she would be leaving it all behind.  
  
She doesn’t feel Kairi inside of her, because Kairi is her. Kairi is all around her, Kairi is the flesh she’s encased in and the memories she has of how the sea feels against her skin. Kairi is everything, and Kairi is nothing, because for all that she is Kairi, she can’t help but feel like she’s somehow different.  
  
She shakes her head, ignoring the phantom call of sorrow in her heart.  
  
There are things she must do—things that her and Xion must do. Memories to restore, hearts to heal, darkness to extract.  
  
She finds Saix first, growling where he’s slumped next to Axel. Thankfully, Axel is bleeding, but very much alive. Somewhere, Roxas shouts for him, and she barely notices when he barrels past her and Xion, collapsing at Axel’s side. He manages a bloody smile through gritted teeth, and she knows that she needs not touch his memories. His have already fallen back into place.  
  
 _Love conquers all spells_ , the old man Ansem had said. He had been right, after all.  
  
She crouches before Saix, ignoring his snarl, and next to her Xion reaches out. She feels the fragment of darkness as if it were her own hand cupping it, absorbing it into them. It hisses and wriggles, but subsides, smothered by the darkness inside of Xion.  
  
Saix blinks at them, and then notices Axel, his entire face going paper white.  
  
 _I didn’t know him_ , she hears him think, as loudly as if it were her own thought. _All this time, and I didn’t know him._  
  
She rises, moving onwards. He does not need her for this.  
  
She makes her way through the crowd, feeling memories clink back into place with every touch. Xion sucks out the darkness like poison, and it hurts them, but they press on. Hurts don’t matter, not for them.  
  
In a few hours, everyone will have their memories restored.  
  
In a few hours, she and Xion won’t even be a memory.  
  
She is not a healer, but she is a weaver, magic in her blood like water. A touch is all it takes to knit Aqua’s flesh back together—memory weaver, flesh healer, none of it matters, and it is easier after Aqua is restored.  
  
They huddle together—Aqua, Terra, and Ven—and when they kiss, Namine moves on to the next spirit.  
  
They are nearly at the end of the line when she feels Xion balk inside of her skull, her sister-self drawing up beside her. She feels fear and panic, hears Xion whisper inside her head, _What happens to us now?_  
  
 _We return our memories to her. We disappear._  
  
Xion makes an audible little sound, her face horrified, and Namine does her best not to flinch at the question she asks. _Will they remember us_.  
  
 _Everything about us was built on these memories. No one will remember us when we're gone. There won't be any "us" to remember._  
  
She feels Xion’s panic, sees the rapid images flash her by—Roxas smiling at them on the train, Roxas letting Xion into the bathhouse, Roxas, Roxas, Roxas. For the first time, she allows herself to truly feel the heartbreak. _I can't save us, Xion. Not even a memory of us._  
  
There’s one last soul to heal, lurking inside the bathhouse. Xion flinches when she sees him, and he catches the movement, smirking at her. “Hey there, little puppet,” he greets, and Xion’s side of her heart flashes dark with rage, darkness surging against darkness.  
  
Namine soothes her with a touch, light to darkness that she doesn’t let contaminate, not yet.  
  
“Not quite a real boy yet, are you, Pinnochio,” Namine says, quietly, because it’s what Xion wants her to say. The boy’s face twists in anger.  
  
“I don’t need your help,” he hisses.  
  
“I can help you join back with Ven, make you whole again,” she tells him, reaching. He jerks back from her, glaring.  
  
“I don’t want to be a part of him again. I am me.”  
  
That drives a knife right through her heart, but she knows Xion feels it the most, the other girl letting a loud, keening wail dribble from her lips. _We are us_ , Xion shrieks in their head. _I am me, you are you, she is she. Please_.  
  
It hurts her, and she knows the other boy knows it. She shakes her head slowly. _It isn’t the same for us. Ven can live without his darkness. Kairi doesn’t exist without us._  
  
No, she hears, low and mournful, and then Xion goes silent.  
  
“Are you sure?” she asks the boy. “I won’t be around to ask again.”  
  
He sneers. “Go back to being nothing, little girl. I’ll take my chances with being something.”  
  
They leave the bathhouse for a last time. Somewhere, Roxas is looking for them.  
  
 _Let’s go home_ , she thinks.  
  
Xion makes no reply.  
  
Namine isn’t surprised.  
  
.  
  
He loses time between the battle and Roxas finding him in the aftermath. His head aches and there’s a bleeding chunk of skin torn from his shoulder, but he’s better than he’d expected, especially after charging down Xehanort like he occasionally had bouts of suicidal tendencies.  
  
He’s at Roxas’ side when Namine and Xion find him again, and even if he doesn’t understand much of what’s happened, he gets the gist.  
  
Kairi, he thinks. The name of the girl Roxas kept forgetting.  
  
“How is this going to work?” Roxas asks, fidgeting nervously at his side. He smells of guilt, and Axel knows that he’s blaming himself for what’s to come—that he probably thinks he’s making them do this.  
  
Namine, at least, smells of conviction. Xion smells of fear and resignation.  
  
“When you remember one thing that leads to remembering another, and then another, and another,” she hesitates, like she’s not sure how to phrase the next bit. “Our memories are connected—yours, hers, ours. They will bring us together and we’ll go back to how we were.”  
  
“So, all I have to do is remember her?” he asks.  
  
She bites her lip, but nods slowly.  
  
He chuckles. “Sora and Riku would probably be better at it, I think. Maybe we should get them first?”  
  
She shakes her head. “You’re her friend too, you know that. And…”  
  
Again, with the hesitation. “You are also our friend. It will not hurt as much if it’s you.”  
  
Roxas flinches, so Axel wraps an arm around him. Steadies him there. There are eyes on them, and he knows that he will have to talk to Isa—Saix—at some point. For now, he will offer Roxas the support he needs.  
  
“I’ll remember you though, right?” Roxas asks, half pleading, and Xion gives an agonized little jerk, as if her strings have been cut.  
  
“It doesn’t work that way, Roxas,” is all Namine will say, not reacting when Xion gives a mournful little moan.  
  
She could have slapped him and hurt him less. Roxas stares at her, face crumbling. “Isn’t there another way?” he pleads. “Some way for the three of you to exist?”  
  
“There isn’t.” The air smells of salt, tears dripping down Roxas’ cheeks. He doesn’t know them the way Roxas does, but there’s still an ache in his heart on Roxas’ behalf. Xion moves forward, so quickly that he barely sees her, and then she’s right in front of him, wiping at Roxas’ eyes.  
  
“Don’t cry for us, Roxas,” she whispers in Namine’s voice. “You won’t be hurting for long. And… I’m glad. That I got to meet you.”  
  
“Xion,” Roxas breathes, her name catching in his throat.  
  
Decisively, she takes a step back, joining hands with Namine. “Don’t make this harder on us, Roxas, please,” Namine says, her voice finally starting to shake. The resolve is crumbling. If they don’t do this soon, they never will.  
  
“Roxas,” he whispers. “Think about her. About Kairi.”  
  
Roxas gives a little sob, raising his hand to his mouth and biting down on his knuckles to muffle the cries.  
  
“We’ll miss you,” Xion says.  
  
“Me too,” Roxas manages to get out from around his fist, and Namine nods.  
  
Axel watches Roxas’ eyes slide shut, until the two girls start growing brighter and brighter—until he’s forced to look away.  
  
When he blinks his eyes open, there’s an unfamiliar girl standing before him, tears streaked down her cheeks. She looks confused, brushing at her eyes.  
  
“Kairi,” Roxas says from beside him, startled, and the girl blinks.  
  
“Roxas,” she says, a blinding grin beginning to spread across her face. It falters, crumpling around the edges. “Why are you crying?”  
  
When Axel turns to glance at him, Roxas is wiping at his own face, brow crinkled. “I’m not sure,” he breathes, and there’s a flicker of something there, some misplaced emotion churning in Axel’s heart.  
  
Roxas shrugs, and elbows him, and the moment is forgotten. “Maybe this guy fed us crying roofies again.”  
  
“Again?” Kairi says, aghast. Axel just rolls his eyes.  
  
“He’s being stupid,” he tells her, hip checking Roxas into the other girl and ignoring their protests. “It was magic, not roofies.”  
  
There’s still a sense of something missing, a feeling that everyone else seems to share. No one can get their stories straight, on just how Xehanort managed to end up memoryless and comatose, or how the battle really ended.  
  
They all shrug it off. If it’s important, they’ll remember.  
  
.  
  
As it turns out, Ansem the Wise is a pretty decent ruler. He gets everything back to order with ease, taking his name and power back with grace.  
  
They lock Xehanort in the same birdcage of a room that he’d kept Ven, and no one knows why they find him dead in his cell several days later, his body ancient—a gaunt skeleton of a corpse. Ven is quiet that day, and while most people realize that he knows more than he’s letting on, they don’t care enough to ask.  
  
Kairi takes to Axel immediately, and he’s the one who points out the two hair ties wrapped around each of her wrists, glittering up at them: one blue, the other green. She blinks at them, eyes gone blank, and for a moment, it’s as if her eyes are two different shades of blue. Then the moment passes and she shrugs, using them to tie up her hair.  
  
Another day passes before Aqua, recently made Ansem’s new apprentice, is well enough to wake Sora and Riku.  
  
They make a day out of it, turning all the pigs back into humans and sending them back over the river, sans memories, but no longer having to dread being eaten for dinner.  
  
Sora, predictably, takes being a pig in stride and quickly falls in love with the bathhouse, spending days traipsing all over with Riku—bothering Demyx and the guards, taking baths and making friends with the spirits.  
  
It’s strange, after everything they’ve been through to have days of tranquility. He spends his days with his brother or on the rooftop with Axel, the nights in Axel’s bed.  
  
“Copper for your thoughts?” Axel asks him that night, nudging him gently between the ribs. Sadly, with Axel’s elbows, gently means he’s still going to bruise. The sun is very nearly down, the sky gone purple with twilight, ice cream long gone. A star winks down at them from above, and Roxas sighs, flopping onto his back.  
  
“Just thinking.”  
  
Axel settles down next to him, their arms brushing together. It makes his heart twist, swelling with emotion. He wants to kiss him.  
  
“About what?” Axel whispers, curling towards him and settling his cheek on Roxas’ shoulder.  
  
“Stuff,” he says, shrugging. He debates on leaving it at that before he decides that Axel deserves to know more.  
  
“The human world,” he sighs, flinging an arm over his eyes. Axel goes quiet at his side, the silence stretching until it’s more than uncomfortable. He’s about to open his mouth to say something, anything, when Axel lurches to the side, rolling on top of him in one smooth motion.  
  
His eyes are wide, the glow of the setting sun setting the green of his eyes aflame. "I’ll remember you," he breathes, bending to kiss Roxas’ collarbone. He’s shaking faintly, and Roxas just knows that he’s fighting down the urge to ask him to stay.  
  
Roxas smiles down at him, threading his hands through Axel’s hair—pulling Axel back up so he can kiss the very corner of his lips.  
  
He probably shouldn’t make a decision this flippantly, but he figures he’s more spirit than human at this point anyway, created from the union of spirit and human.  
  
"You won’t have to," he whispers.  
  
Explaining things to his brother can wait. For now, he pulls Axel down for a warm kiss, the stars their only witness.  
  
.  
  
The field beyond the spirit realm is grassier than he remembers, one long stretch of green. In the distance, he can just make out the little building they’d come through, all that time ago. They stop on the steps, just before the place where the grass starts.  
  
“There’s no water here anymore,” Roxas muses, peering out as if he can magic the river into being. “We could just walk across…”  
  
Axel stops him before he steps out onto the grass, shaking his head. Kairi, Riku, and Sora pause on the bottom step, turning to peer back at them.  
  
“We can’t go any farther,” Roxas explains.  
  
He tries not to feel guilty when their faces fall, Kairi’s eyes blurring with tears. “And you’re sure about this? About staying?” she asks, swiping at the tears before they can fall. He nods. Sora bounces once, twice, three times on the balls of his feet, and spins, flinging himself into Roxas’ arms.  
  
“How am I supposed to live without you?” he whispers.  
  
Larxene’s going to punch him for getting the shoulder of one of her kimonos smeared with snot, he just knows it.  
  
He smiles down at his brother. “It’s easy. Here, close your eyes.”  
  
Obligingly, Sora’s eyes slide shut. Roxas hesitates, then lays a hand over his brother’s heart. “A wise man told me recently that once you meet someone, you never really forget them. So don’t ever forget, I’m always with you. You’ve gotta just remember to be brave.”  
  
He bites his lip, something that someone else recently told him coming to mind. He can’t remember their face, but he remembers the words.  
  
“Memory isn’t simple. Many pieces are linked together, like they’re in a chain. When you remember one thing, you start to remember another and then another. Our memories are connected. One day that light—those memories—will bring us together. You still have all your memories, don’t you?”  
  
The smile Sora flashes him is watery, and then Kairi is flinging herself at him too, hooking her fingers into the bracelet he’d gotten at Ansem’s, the one that was supposed to protect him. “We’ll remember you, Roxas. And you, Axel,” she breathes wetly into his neck.  
  
She pulls away, and Roxas feels like his heart is getting yanked in two different directions.  
  
“Remember what I told you,” Axel tells them. “Time flows differently in the spirit world. I can’t guarantee you’ll be in the same decade much less the same century. Still want to go?”  
  
Sora chokes on a laugh, reaching over and slapping him on the back. “You know me and adventures. Besides, Riku wouldn’t be able to stand being cooped up in one place.”  
  
Riku shoves at him. “Like you would even be able to. I’m surprised you stayed in that pig pen.”  
  
They’re quiet for a long moment after the laughter dies off, shifting around awkwardly. “Guess this is goodbye,” Roxas finally whispers, breaking the silence. The hug they pull him into is warm, limbs everywhere. None of them smell like home anymore, but he breathes deep anyways, keeping the memory locked away in his heart.  
  
“It’s not forever,” Kairi says.  
  
“Yeah, you promised,” Sora chimes in.  
  
For his part, Riku just smirks. “You’ll have to come take your brother off my hands sometime, or I’ll never forgive you.”  
  
“Just remember,” Axel insists. “You have to promise not to look back, not until you’ve passed through the tunnel. We’ll meet again.”  
  
Roxas bites viciously down on a sob, shoving his brother gently into Riku’s arms. “Go now,” he gasps. “And don’t look back.”  
  
They go.  
  
They aren’t even halfway down the hill before Roxas stops trying to bite back the tears, letting them silently trickle down his cheeks. His eyes are itching, but he watches, unblinking as Axel gathers him against his chest.  
  
“There’s a new world waiting for them out there. Scary, isn’t it?” he muses, rubbing soothing circles against Roxas’ back.  
  
Roxas watches Kairi, hair still held up by the thread that they’d woven together—him and those two important people he’s forgotten. Kairi, who is visibly fighting not to turn around, Riku’s arm around both her and Sora, guiding them gently down the hill.  
  
He watches them until they fade from view, crossing into the tunnel.  
  
He brushes his tears away; smiles.  
  
“I think they can handle it.”


End file.
